Property consultancy Savills (Singapore) has tied up with a Singapore fintech to offer digital payments for SMEs.
Savills and fintech banco plan to offer digital financing and payments services in the property industry, focusing on improving access and providing more competitive options to suppliers and service providers, as well as boosting sustainability practices via green financing, according to a press release Tuesday. The tie-up will target payments between strata management stakeholders, the release said.
Targeting SMEs
It will also provide better access to supply-chain financing and early payment services for small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in the sector, offering lower cost cash and working capital management services to a segment which has historically had difficulty accessing those services, partly due to expense, the release said.
The collaboration will also work to create green financing to help local businesses reduce their carbon footprint, the release said. It cited data from Deloitte estimating the property sector is responsible for 40 percent of global carbon emissions. Banco’s services include sustainability assessments, according to its website.
Improving ESG
Chris Marriott, CEO for Southeast Asia at Savills, said in the statement: «This is an exciting collaboration bringing together Savills' extensive property management portfolio and industry expertise with banco platform's cutting edge fintech capabilities, and in doing so bring meaningful solutions to the industry and playing our part to improve ESG.»
The banco platform was launched in 2018 by RootAnt Group, a Singapore-based fintech company. RootAnt raised $2.3 million in funding across three seed rounds in 2018 and 2020, according to Crunchbase data. In March 2021, SBI Holdings, a Japanese financial services group, took a 4.85 percent stake in the company.
