Electronic KYC, financing and 'smart' matching among OneSME trade platform features

Singapore

OneSME, a cross-border digital trade platform launched on Monday, will help local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) reach a pool of businesses in China that have shown keen interest in Singapore products.

According to a survey conducted in July with more than 2,100 SMEs on the OneConnect YiQiYe platform in China, 93 per cent of respondents who are in charge of procurement intend to purchase from outside China. Of these respondents looking to buy from overseas suppliers, 85 per cent ranked Singapore their top overseas procurement choice.

OneSME will connect business-to-business (B2B) platforms in Singapore to their counterparts in China, like YiQiYe, to help Singapore SMEs expand their overseas reach and tap this demand.

The OneSME platform is developed and operated by OneConnect Financial Technology (Singapore) and supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority.

Serve as a digital hub

To start, OneSME is connecting Singapore SMEs on local B2B procurement platforms Bizmann System and Eezee.sg to a buyer base of four million SMEs on YiQiYe. It will serve as a digital hub to provide connectivity, secure transactions and an ecosystem of services for SMEs in both countries.

The platform's five main functions are to help SMEs transact across borders, expand, learn, access financing and digitalise their businesses. The first three functions are already available, while the "finance" function will be available in Q4 this year and the "digitalise" function in the next phase of the project.

Initially, the platform will focus on industrial equipment, medical devices and food and beverage products. This is based on the results of a survey conducted with SMEs on YiQiYe, said Nicholas Tan, head of ecosystems and partnerships at Oneconnect.

"We found that these were the sectors with the highest demand, largely because of the reputation of the products and suppliers from Singapore," Dr Tan said.

Currently, Singapore SMEs must be doing business with local procurement platforms Eezee.sg and Bizmann System in order to be on-boarded onto OneSME. The initial focus on platform-to-platform connection will help ensure that trade is conducted between trusted communities that are owned, qualified and nurtured by each country, said Tan Bin Ru, CEO for South-east Asia at OneConnect Financial Technology.

In future phases, OneSME may add the option to join the platform directly, so that more SMEs can use it to sell their products to Singapore firms, look for business partners or leverage the financing options.

All companies and products on the platform will be validated by OneConnect's electronic know-your-customer (eKYC) solution, using data from trusted sources like government registries.

OneConnect also provides a smart business matching algorithm on the platform to help match demand and supply between buyers and sellers.

The platform's financial services partner is United Overseas Bank (UOB), which signed a memorandum of understanding with OneConnect to provide its suite of banking and digital solutions directly on OneSME. UOB will also support SMEs' digitalisation efforts through its solutions like UOB BizSmart, and will promote OneSME to its customers.

Lawrence Loh, head of group business banking at UOB, said the bank's tie-up with OneConnect will make it easier for SMEs to access financing and get their applications approved. UOB's credit underwriting engine incorporates data not traditionally used in assessment, such as a company's sales on e-commerce platforms. This helps to significantly reduce the amount of time needed to review an application.

Support SMEs to obtain working capital

"By using additional sources of data, we are able to more accurately determine a business' credit worthiness and in turn, support SMEs in obtaining the working capital they need," said Mr Loh.

Other ecosystem partners include Global eTrade Services, the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), IPOS International and the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry. OneSME plans to add more partners in the future, and eventually expand the platform to link local businesses to SMEs in other Asian markets such as the Philippines and Malaysia.

Ian Ong, sales and operations manager for Hong Teck Hin Hardware & Machinery (HTH), hopes to see untapped emerging markets like Vietnam, Myanmar and Cambodia added to OneSME in the future.

Using Eezee.sg to sell its industrial chemical products over the course of one year has boosted HTH's online sales revenue by 10 to 15 per cent, and Mr Ong estimates another 10 per cent increase within a year once it starts selling to Chinese SMEs on OneSME.

"As we all know, the Chinese market is one of the biggest markets in the world," Mr Ong said. "OneSME acts as a platform to link businesses from different regions, and hopefully we can tap on this and leverage this platform to increase our revenue."

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