StashAway Malaysia enhances collections to support growth

Launched in Singapore in 2017, StashAway has rapidly grown into one of Asia’s leading digital investment platforms, serving investors in 5 markets. Through a single app, clients can access expertly-built portfolios, cash management solutions, do-it-yourself exchange traded fund (ETF) investing, and private market investments – making it simple for everyone to save, invest, and build long-term wealth.

At its core, StashAway focuses on building confident investors. A key part of that is delivering a seamless investing experience, where clients can invest their funds conveniently and quickly. This is no different in Malaysia – one of their key growth markets.

Malaysia is one of Southeast Asia’s most digitally savvy markets, where consumers are accustomed to digital payment methods and efficient fulfillment of services.

StashAway was therefore looking to enhance its user experience in two key areas. The first was to expand supported payment methods to cover various popular local options. The second was to reduce turnaround time on crediting deposits to investment accounts as certain methods, such as direct debits, could take weeks to set up.

StashAway decided to partner with HSBC as its new main payments and collections partner in Malaysia, migrating collections (i.e. investor deposits) over to HSBC, with payments (i.e. investor withdrawals and payments to brokers) to follow in a second phase.

In the first phase, StashAway worked with HSBC to expand supported payment options for deposits by implementing HSBC’s Omni Collect solution. Critically, the solution enabled support for FPX, a national payment gateway that is one of the most popular options in Malaysia, enabling deposit placements via real-time bank transfer.

As a future enhancement, StashAway will also explore adopting PayNet’s real-time auto-debit solution via HSBC, which will allow direct debit mandates to be established and used immediately upon approval.

A custom workflow was also designed to allow StashAway to pull transaction details from the Omni Collect solution. Used in tandem with HSBC’s Transaction Enquiry APIs, this provided on-demand confirmation that investor payments have been processed and received. This allows StashAway to send real-time push notifications to clients once their deposits are credited.

To support ongoing disbursements through its incumbent bank until the migration’s second phase is complete, StashAway elected to use a third-party integrator, Acme Technologies, to work with HSBC on solution implementation.

As connectivity schematics from both banks are pre-integrated on Acme’s platform, StashAway can establish real-time data feeds from both banks through a single API connection. Through this, StashAway continues to receive the relevant information needed to fulfill existing deposits and withdrawal efficiently.