2C2P is a Singapore-based company which provides a platform for e-commerce payment processing service with a set of industry standards, real-time fraud monitoring, and business intelligence reports and utilizes latest web 2.0 technologies extensively to process payment faster and enhance user experiences. The company has also won the grand prize for the Nokia Calling All lnnovators competition in the emerging countries and mobile necessities category and have been featured in the recent Nokia One-Connected World. We sat down with Aung, the founder of 2C2P and go through a range of issues from how the idea of 2C2P is conceived to the product and finally his thoughts on entrepreneurs in general.
BL: Hi Aung, great to have you here on SGE and congratulations on winning the Nokia: Calling All Innovators award. Tell us about your background. What did you do before setting up 2C2P?
Aung: I started writing computer programs since 1996. I moved to Thailand in 1999 and worked for a couple of IT companies as developer/system analyst. Around year 2000, I designed and developed mobile payment solution called “Mobile Payment Club” for the company then called WRC. While working at WRC, I had a chance to come to Singapore in 2002 to compete at the 72 hours marathon programming competition held at Suntac City organized by HP and Nokia. We had a chance to hook up our notebook to MMSC (A system to send MMS messages) of Singtel. At that time, MMS was quite high tech :). Our application (called MMS Movie Reservation) won an award under MMS category. I think this is the beginning of all the changes happened to me. We were then invited to Cannes, France to compete again in Europe in 2003. We won two awards there. These awards and a few people from organizers (Nokia and HP) encouraged me to start my own business.
I started a company called SinaptIQ in 2003. In the early days, I wanted to develop mobile applications and mobile games. However, at that time, mobile application market was tightly controlled by the mobile operators unlike today. I would have to negotiate with each operators to sell my application on their portal under their terms. At that time, operators are only in favor of bigger content providers and it was very difficult for a smaller companies to strike a deal with them. Today, things have changed thanks to breakthrough idea from Apple’s AppStore. The playing field is now level and both small and big companies can sell their applications to all the mobile users across different continent using different mobile operators’ service.
Due to the conditions I mentioned in 2003, SinaptIQ shifted her focus on development of e-commerce payment solutions. SinaptIQ today has several key products being licensed and used by several leading Thai banks. After learning about e-commerce business and providing various payment solutions for the industry for five years, I started 2C2P in Singapore in 2008 to provide comprehensive e-commerce and m-commerce payment solutions to customers across Asia Pacific region.
BL: How did the idea of 2C2P Mobile Credit Card Terminal application come about?
Aung: In developing countries, credit card payment processing still faces many challenges. Sometimes, it is not financially feasible to equip every employee with wireless credit card terminals. For example, home delivery businesses, multi level marketing businesses and etc. However, nearly everybody has a mobile phone. Therefore, I wanted to bring virtual credit card terminal to their mobile phone. That’s why we created this application. We implemented CNP (Card Not Present) transaction processing into the mobile application.
BL: Can you briefly tell us about 2C2P and what does it do for the consumers?
Aung: 2C2P provides innovative payment processing solutions for businesses with online e-commerce sites. 2C2P is in compliance with the highest security standards and utilizes the latest web 2.0 technologies extensively to process payments faster and to enhance user experience. 2C2P manages a complete transaction life-cycle, which includes payer authentication, payment authorization, payment routing, settlement and post-settlement dispute and chargeback management. Its customer portfolio includes government agencies, financial institutions and other large corporations. Since it began operations, 2C2P has been continuously developing and launching new products to offer unequalled benefits to its users.
BL: What are the three most interesting features on 2C2P application that you like users to know about?
Aung: First: Integrated Fraud Monitoring and Proactive Fraud Mitigation – this feature is integrated with payment mechanism. So, e-commerce businesses do not need to look for third party stand alone fraud solution. In addition to that, our system proactively mitigates fraud instead of passively reacting fraud cases. Second: Payment Routing – this feature allows e-commerce businesses to accept alternative payment methods and credit card acceptance from multiple banks. Third: Business Intelligence – this feature provides ready made business intelligence report using transaction data. For instance, e-commerce business owners will be able to understand what kind of credit card their customers used to purchase and their issuers name and country.
BL: How does the application generate revenues and what value it does for credit card companies?
Aung: 2C2P Mobile Credit Card Terminal is simply an extension of our core service offering. Therefore, this application will be provided to our clients for free. We have three different revenue streams from our business. They are: commission fees, transaction fees and subscription fees. We are currently in discussion with a few banks to enable our mobile application to interface with their credit card system.
BL: What are the challenges in dealing with vendors such as Visa, Mastercard and JCB to work with you?
Aung: Our core products (VISA3D Secure) are certified by Visa, Mastercard and JCB. We have experience in dealing with them and we comply with their stringent security requirements and regulation.
BL: What are the tips that you would give to start-ups which wants to work with a mobile handset vendor like Nokia or enter into a competition with Calling All Innovators?
Aung: Nokia treats developers very well. As Forum Nokia executives rightly mentioned during the press release, Nokia regards developers as one of the key component of their ecosystem. The key to success is to develop a solution that solves a problem well. One should not try to do many things from single application.
BL: How does 2C2P benefit from Nokia’s ecosystem in the recent One Connected World event in KL?
Aung: We’ve got several leads and a few potential business partners.
BL: What are the three most important traits of an entrepreneur?
Aung: One, execution skill regardless of obstacles; two, having an attitude of everything needs to be done by yesterday and three, have a very thick skin with positive attitude.
BL: Aung, thanks for the interview. We wish you all the best for 2C2P and let us know of any new developments on your enterprise.