JAZZYPAY is eyeing to provide cashless payments solutions to health and educational institutions while forging partnerships with other business industries such as tourism and recreation.

The payments solutions provider is eyeing to ease financial transactions for small merchants across the country, one of its top officials said.

“Most of the fintech institutions nowadays are tapping the mainstream businesses especially the retail establishments, boutiques, restaurants. On the other hand, JazzyPay is coming from a different angle. We’re supporting the underserved businesses, especially essential service providers,” JazzyPay Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Joshua Martin A. Marindo said in an interview with BusinessWorld.

Mr. Marindo, together with the firm’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Kathleen Denise P. Acosta, conceptualized JazzyPay guided by the experiences of Filipino families that sometimes have to wait for remittances or help from other relatives to pay for tuition fees or hospital bills, which is unreliable for urgent needs as these are not available real-time.

Through the payments firm, relatives from abroad or in other parts of the country can pay real-time using their credit card through JazzyPay’s app or through their website, without even having to sign up for an account.

It charges on a per transaction basis — 3% for the merchants and 1% plus a P15 transaction fee for the customers. Payments coursed through JazzyPay may be done via credit and debit cards, e-wallets, bank transfers, and over-the-counter transactions.

Mr. Marindo said while 50-60% of their business partners are Luzon-based, they have also inked deals with hospitals in Visayas and Mindanao region particularly in Isabela, Bukidnon, and Cotabato, among others.

While their priorities are merchants with education and health-related businesses, Mr. Marindo said they are open to accepting firms from other sectors looking to digitize their payments.

“We are getting applications from other businesses such as auto garage, travel agencies, spas, wellness, gyms. So we expect more merchants that will be driving more transactions by next year, especially the travel agencies…as they are preparing for the opening of the tourism industry,” Mr. Marindo said.

JazzyPay raised $500,000 or about P24-25 million from a seed financing round from Cocoon Capital. Mr. Marindo said they will use the funds to improve their platform and to support their marketing efforts.

“We will be opening another fund raising somewhere next year around the second quarter,” Mr. Marindo said, noting they have already been approached by several venture capital firms across Southeast Asia to explore business prospects with them.

As they continue to build more business partnerships across the country, Mr. Marindo and Ms. Acosta said they also see some opportunities in Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam, where they have observed some trends similar to those in the Philippines.

“We are not closing our doors to opportunities, but we want to focus on the Philippines for now. And if given the chance for those plans to proceed earlier, we will gladly take on to it,” Ms. Acosta said.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas is targeting to make the Philippines cash-lite by 2023, where 50% of payments are done digitally. — L.W.T. Noble

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