ComplyLaunch Customer Spotlight: Xswap

Accessing banking services in the Philippines has been notoriously difficult for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Due to their limited acceptable collateral and inadequate financial statements and business plans, Filipino MSMEs have historically struggled with the traditional banking system, even though they make up 99.5% of all businesses in the country. 

Miguel Mapa and his team at Xswap are on a mission to serve this community by creating a neobanking platform specifically designed for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We caught up with Mapa to learn more. 

Introducing Xswap

Founded by a group of ex-bankers, Xswap seeks to improve the retail banking experience for small businesses with a new neo bank due to launch later in 2022. 

“We’re set on giving them better ways of banking,” says Mapa, who shared that the pandemic had created a new business landscape in need of better banking services. “Not only did the pandemic lead to an influx of new small Filipino businesses entering the market, but it also prompted established businesses to start exploring digitization. […] Xswap is geared to meet the needs of this new landscape without the obstacles that traditional banking services put in front of them.” 

Relieving pain points for MSMEs

Xswap was founded on the grounds of relieving the pain MSMEs currently feel when undertaking their business finances in the Philippines. 

“We wanted to create a seamless business bank for MSMEs and entrepreneurs, enabling them to focus their time, energy, and money on what really matters – keeping a small business running.

“We strongly feel that the small business community is the most in need of this solution. Big businesses have a lot of people in their accounting teams, they have relationship managers and private bankers, but entrepreneurs have none of these. Small businesses are the ones who hustle, the ones who are scrappy, the ones doing 10 jobs at once, and they have had to take the brunt of the slow and expensive business banking services that currently exist in the market.”

Some of the features Xswap provides are the ability to conduct payroll and the issuing of corporate cards. “Corporate cards are generally only ever talked about by multinational corporations,” says Mapa. “Small businesses just don’t have the proper options available to them when they need to spend money on their business. So we’re providing them with a new digital option.”

A collaborative core

“The thing I love most about building Xswap is the people I get to work with. Both the people I work with internally and the groups we partner with externally, are so full of energy and have such a collaborative spirit.

“From the estimators and other payments partners to our FinTech partners, the interactions we have with these people or groups are always inspiring. I get the impression that everyone wants to work together and they understand that by working together we can create something of great value.”  

Ideas become a reality

“My proudest moment of building Xswap so far has to be centered around my team and what we’ve created. Starting as just an idea during the first lockdown of the pandemic, we are now looking at the beginning of the future of small business banking in the Philippines.

“Many of us in the team haven’t even met each other in person yet, and sometimes it’s difficult to fathom how we were able to create something like this given the circumstances. But I am proud of how we worked through it and overcame the situation for the good of MSMEs.” 

What’s next for Xswap?

Xswap is currently in its beta phase but is due to launch in the Philippines later in 2022.

“We’re seeing a lot of movement in the business communities right now, especially with small businesses. We’re now at the stage where everyone is moving into a post-pandemic world where people are hoping and calling for an economic bounce-back. It’s our mission to help this bounce back and we must be as strong as possible for the strong businesses and entrepreneurs of our country.”

Are you an early stage FinTech and need a KYC and AML solution?

Ready your start-up for scale with free access to our transaction monitoring and customer screening tools through ComplyLaunch.

Register for ComplyLaunch today

Follow Xswap:

LinkedIn

Connect with Miguel Mapa