Youtap: Embracing a Smarter Retail Landscape

The world is moving closer to the vision of a cashless economy with each passing day. Safer, easier and transparent e-payment methods are available in the market to cater to one of the major technological shifts of the century. Even with the obvious benefits, there has been a lot of skepticism around the impact of cashless transactions in the retail sector. However, modern-day solutions aid small businesses to leverage technology for profit. Youtap is a leading financial service provider that delivers a wide array of services which are focused solely on emerging markets.

Founded in 2012, Youtap’s deep operational experience is tailored for challenging environments that are typically not found in first world markets. The company allows clients to leverage its established suite of award-winning products and services focused on meeting the needs of growth market merchants. “Running a small business is hard; doing it in a growth market is even harder. Essentially, our suite of products is designed to put merchants in a position to succeed,” says Chris Jones, CEO, and founder, Youtap.

Their Merchant App and Youtap X8 are the two flagship products introduced in the market by the company. The Merchant App is a white label solution to accept contactless NFC and QR code e-money payments and transfers.

It is an enabler for the cashless ecosystem, where merchant and supply chain payments are both accepted. Alongside the payment processing functionality, the Merchant App includes numerous value-added features such as promotions, a loyalty engine, insights and performance data dashboards to monitor the user’s store. On the flipside, X8 is a mass market mobile payments point-of-sale (POS) device for the street, store, and on transport. It has been specially designed to accelerate mass market merchant acceptance of e-money in the world’s most challenging environments.

Telkomsel, the largest mobile operator in Indonesia with over 190 million subscribers, approached Youtap to create a secure, contactless POS user experience for mobile money transactions. The client needed to re-launch their mobile money service, TCASH, as it was facing issues due to the outdated procedures of payment. Subscribers were required to provide proof of identity, then input a unique, ten-digit single-use token, along with the transaction amount. The process was not just time-consuming for the user, but it also introduced numerous opportunities for errors and misuse. Youtap enabled the transition to new age technology and services by enabling TCASH mobile money subscribers to access their digital wallets for payment by simply tapping their mobile phone on the NFC terminal and entering their PIN at the point of sale. At present, TCASH reportedly has over 20 million subscribers with 10 million active users.

The holistic solutions built by the company are aimed at benefiting, both, merchants and customers. Youtap has received numerous awards and recognition for their solutions, including “Best NFC-Enabled Solution” and “Best Digital Solution” at CEPI Asia Awards. “Currently we are scaling up our operations across Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia. We are working with partners to examine strategic expansion opportunities across the region,” added Jones. Providing innovative products to its clients without compromising on the quality and security drives the company forward.