Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are called to go online including accepting cashless payments here and abroad, to expand their business.

PayMaya MSME Ecosystem Business Development Lead Nick Marohombsar dispelled the perception that going online only involves creating a website requiring a budget and tapping an expert.

“It is not necessary just that. It can be conversational commerce, social media platforms whether creating a Facebook page for your business, creating an Instagram page, joining a viber community group to share your business, that’s already a step towards moving online,” he said during a webinar session.

Marohombsar also underscored the importance of hyperlocal community ecommerce given the different lockdowns amid the pandemic.

“So that’s one benefit of going online is taking advantage of this type of platform wherein you have the market already ready to buy whatever you are selling,” he said.

Marohombsar said merchants likewise must accept all forms of payments “anytime, anywhere.”

“So I think one thing we were adjusting to, we adjusted during this pandemic is your cashless payments so the convenience of being able to accept more than cash was highlighted more in the past year more than ever. As merchants, you want to accept payments from all customers, manage cash flow and working capital, and increase sales and visibility,” he added.

Marohombsar said PayMaya has solutions for accepting payments from clients, even those abroad.

Charmaine Lynn, account manager at GCash Online MSME Partnerships and Aggregators, said the GCash Payment Link is the best payment option for business and small entrepreneurs that sell online.

“Or if you have a storefront, it would be good to have a QR so it would also be a good advertisement for your customers to see that you have GCash acceptance for your stores already. If you are both an online store with a storefront, you could have the flexibility of having GCash QR in your physical store and the payment links available
for the orders that you get online so all these options are all available on the Gcash website…,” she said.

Lynn said GCash has more products available for the MSMEs and is also working on providing loans to its merchants to help boost their businesses.

For his part, Marohombsar said “we are working on something for our PayMaya merchants for MSMEs so we can start lending to them definitely to help their business grow or actually even to just jumpstart their business.”