Why we are lowering our pricing

We have some great news for our current and prospective merchants! As of today, we have decided that we will lower our transaction pricing from 1% + S$0.25 to 0.7% + S$0.25. Why? Read all about it in our founder’s editorial.

New country. Same business opportunity

Originally hailing from the Netherlands, I grew up with bank transfers being very commonplace. Since 2005, Dutch consumers were already adopting the e-commerce payment system iDEAL which expedites transfers to a merchant from any Dutch bank. In 2019, 60% of all online payments were done through iDEAL and have resulted in very high conversion rates (>90%).

When I moved to Singapore in 2019, I was startled to see that it was generally accepted that 3–5% of any e-commerce order sold would end up as card processing fees. For reference, iDEAL only costs between €0.25-€0.35 (S$0.40-S$0.57) per transaction. This was a luxury Singapore had yet to get a taste of…especially, considering that the real-time payment rails FAST has already been around since 2014.

This is why Maesh was born.

Leading the way for Singapore’s merchants

Maesh does not see a future in which payment gateways can keep charging exorbitant Merchant Discount Rates (MDRs) — for what it’s called, don’t you think it’s somewhat ironic? With the emergence of Open Banking and the issuance of licenses for Digital Banks in Southeast Asia, the payments landscape will soon be upended.

Maesh seeks to pioneer the shift towards cheaper prices, not because we can but because we should. Prices per transaction will now sit at 0.7% + S$0.25, which is fair and can still make us profitable. After all, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, this is Maesh’s way of supporting the businesses that we care about.

Also want to slash your transaction costs? to find out how.

Originally published at https://maesh.io/blog/why-we-are-lowering-our-pricing/ on September 20, 2020.