Watch this Payment Space

Fraedom is a company with roots in New Zealand, where it began life as myPCard.com, a technology startup incubated within Deloitte. Today, it is a wholly owned company of Hogg Robinson Group  providing web-based payment and expense management technology that is used by more than 155,000 organisations in 178 countries. Its goal is to offer frictionless B2B payment solutions through a single user interface scalable to suit companies of different sizes.

Through Hogg Robinson Group’s presence in Hong Kong, Fraedom is using the city as its gateway to Asia. “For us, setting up in Hong Kong is a very strategic move,” Gareth Parrington, Commercial Partnerships Director — Asia, explained. “There is a huge opportunity in Mainland China, and Hong Kong is a launch pad for us to grow our operation into China. Seventy of the 100 biggest banks in the world have a presence in Hong Kong, putting an office here allows us to open up dialogues with those organisations with whom we want to partner.”

He also pointed to FinTech events such as Finnovasia as instrumental in making Hong Kong a hub for companies like Fraedom. “The ecosystem is quickly evolving. In the FinTech space there’s so much optimism about Hong Kong as a city. The way in which Hong Kong is trying to position itself and the work that’s being done are all being seen in very positive light,”  he said. Parrington furthered that APAC is on its way to become the world’s largest market for the payment industry.

He cited a 2014 Nielsen report that showed the region recording US$9 trillion of spend across different types of cards. “If we look forward eight years from now, that is forecast to be US$27 trillion; that’s a phenomenal amount of growth for our industry,” he said. Fraedom’s solutions are distributed through two main ways; either direct to client or through banking partners. While the company has established networks in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and North America, Asia is very much an uncharted territory and hence presents huge potential.

The primary markets in Asia the company is assessing at this point are Hong Kong, Mainland China and India, but Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines are also on its radar. Parrington said that Fraedom will soon be looking to recruit more staff not only on the technical front but also in areas such as client and strategic relationship management. The company now employs over 500 people globally. “We have big plans for our presence in Asia over the next 12 months,” Parrington said.