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PayerMax makes its Southeast Asia debut at Singapore Fintech Festival 2022

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PayerMax makes its Southeast Asia debut at Singapore Fintech Festival 2022

“Collaboration is key to establish a secure and reliable digital payment ecosystem”

PayerMax, an omni-method global payments solution supporting more than 350 local payment methods across Southeast Asia, South Asia,  MENA and LATAM, made its Asia debut at the Singapore Fintech Festival earlier this month. Sharing the stage with key fintech players like Ant Group, GCash, and Coinbase, PayerMax shared expertise from its strategic playbook on post-covid cross border payments and navigating diverse regulatory landscapes.

Singapore Fintech Festival made its first return as an in-person event since the pandemic, with attendees belonging to key sectors like finance institutions, fintech solutions providers, blockchain, higher education and even policy makers and more. This year, along with SFF’s theme of  ‘Building Resilient Business Models amid Volatility and Change’, PayerMax spoke on the evolving digital habits of consumers spurred by the pandemic and how to be future ready. They highlighted that collaboration is the key to shaping the future of digital payments, especially stressing on the need for public and private sectors to work together in the ecosystem.

At a regional level, the digital payments landscape in Southeast Asia is expected to reach US$1.5 trillion by 2030, underscoring the saliency of cashless, contactless, and cross-border payments. Online businesses have mushroomed across Southeast Asia which has made it imperative for the governments to set up a digital payments infrastructure that ensures a safe, secure and reliable ecosystem for all. Leveraging on its partners across Southeast Asia and around the world, PayerMax intends to drive the industry forward by powering businesses to seize opportunities for growth within as well as beyond borders.

“Today, 6 in 10 Southeast Asians remain underbanked or unbanked. Technology is opening doors to newer solutions to enable financial inclusion and we expect to see the digital transformation of banking only grow with time,” says Rinkesh Sharma, Regional Director for PayerMax. “The on-going payments revolution has given way to growth opportunities for microbusinesses and SMEs. But to establish a secure and reliable digital payment ecosystem, collaboration is key. ”

PayerMax empowers global merchants to achieve borderless growth, by providing a full-stack solution where localized payment methods are accepted at scale, within a highly secure, robust and compliant environment.

About PayerMax

PayerMax is the world’s leading omni-method global payment solution, with over 350+ payment methods over 5 continents focusing on empowering the #borderless growth of the world’s top grossing digital merchants from developed markets.

Established in 2020, PayerMax is the emerging markets’ leading regulated digital payment provider servicing online merchants that have ambition beyond borders. PayerMax is headquartered in Singapore with head offices and presence in Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Brazil and China.

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Cosmology Raises $5M to Simplify Web3 Application Development

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Cosmology

The “Adobe for Web3” makes building dApps accessible to a wide range of developers, not just those who have expertise with the entire blockchain stack

Cosmology, the tech suite that enables developers to build Web3 apps in the Cosmos ecosystem, has closed its $5M seed round, co-led by Galileo and Lemniscap with participation from Dispersion, Hashkey, Tuesday Capital, the Osmosis Foundation, Chorus One, Informal Systems, and angels including Kevin Lin, Zaki Manian, Leland Lee, and Ethan Beard. As an official part of the Interchain Stack, Cosmology empowers over 2,000 developers to build applications like dYdX, Osmosis, and Celestia. This funding allows Cosmology to support the growth of the interchain, and provide tools that make app development accessible without requiring deep technical blockchain knowledge.

“Having spent nearly three decades at the intersection of design and technology, I see the potential of Web3 and the need to lower the barriers to development,” said Dan Lynch, Founder of Cosmology. “Our mission is to empower a broad range of developers, driving innovation and the shift from Web2 to Web3. We achieve this by enabling builders to swiftly turn their ideas into launched applications, focusing on big-picture concepts rather than the low-level technical details of blockchain.”

Cosmology’s tools make the development of Web3 applications dramatically simpler for developers throughout the interchain and have been downloaded over 5 million times. They’ve created tools like Telescope, which generates easy-to-use TypeScript libraries for developers to access the functionality of Cosmos blockchains, and Cosmos Kit, a universal wallet adapter for quickly making apps that easily interact with Cosmos blockchains and wallets.

“Dan’s work building developer tooling has led to huge growth in the number of applications being built in Cosmos,” said Sunny Aggarwal, Founder of Osmosis. “Cosmology is making app development on the 100+ blockchains in the ecosystem a streamlined, elegant process.”

Initially focused on front-end tools, Cosmology is now broadening its scope of services to offer a comprehensive full-stack environment for developers. The team now includes experts in key blockchain technologies like Tendermint, Cosmos SDK, and IBC Protocol, enhancing its suite’s capabilities across the board. This expansion gives Cosmology extra bandwidth to support developers from design to deployment, covering everything from user interface design all the way to backend blockchain and smart contract tooling.

“Cosmology is the bedrock underlying everything being built right now in the Cosmos and Celestia ecosystems,” said David Feiock, Managing Partner at Galileo. “As an integral part of building application-specific blockchains, Cosmology tools like Telescope materially reduce the complexities for developers allowing for much quicker innovation and iteration cycles, which will be an essential component of this next phase of growth in crypto.”

Commenting on the announcement, Roderik van der Graaf, Founder of Lemniscap, said: “To date, the perceived complexity of Web3 has kept many Web2 developers from exploring novel use cases that would enhance their product offerings. Cosmology is playing a pivotal role in enabling developers to incorporate Web3 elements in their applications, while circumventing the steep Web3 learning curve. We’re delighted to have co-led this funding round and look forward to supporting Dan and the team in executing a strong growth strategy in 2024 and beyond.”

“Dan’s experience building and exiting low-code platforms like Brandcast is invaluable in the Web3 space, where building applications can prove daunting,” said Pat Gallagher, Managing Partner at Tuesday Capital. “Cosmology is democratizing the digital landscape for businesses and developers alike with an Adobe-style suite of products that lower the barrier to entry, so decentralized application development doesn’t require the full-stack expertise that very few software engineers possess.”

“In the early days of the internet, the concept of every business having its own website once seemed like a pipe dream. Today, we’re at a similar point in time before the brink of a revolution with the Internet of Blockchains. Much like low and no-code platforms transformed Web2, making digital participation accessible to all businesses, I see a future where Web3 is equally open and user-friendly,” said Dan Lynch.

As Cosmos becomes an increasingly interwoven mesh of blockchains, Cosmology is at the forefront of enabling developers to build interchain-native applications. This raise helps the team further build out the essential tooling that’s making Cosmos one of the most attractive places to build in Web3 today.

About Cosmology

Cosmology is creating the Adobe of Web3 – a suite of products that work interdependently to catalyze creativity for builders.

Cosmology is building a unified developer experience for cross chain dApps, streamlining everything from low-level encoding and signing to user interfaces and wallet adapters. Our tools are becoming the standard in the interchain, where our community has now grown to 100+ chains and countless smart contract projects across the Cosmos ecosystem.

Hundreds of developers leverage Cosmology’s software to build DEXes, wallets, governance tooling, NFT platforms, lending, leverage, and liquid staking protocols. These include Osmosis, dYdX, Celestia, Cosmostation, Stride, Juno, DaoDao, Stargaze, Mars Protocol, Leap Wallet, AstroTech, Persistence, Quicksilver and more.

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Seattle based Enzzo Announces $3M in Seed Funding to Accelerate Hardware Product Development

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Enzzo supercharges the product definition and requirements process for companies creating hardware. The $3 million seed investment was led by Unlock Venture Partners with participation from PSL Ventures and the Mayfield/Pioneer Square Labs AIStudio Fund.

Enzzo, a company reimagining how hardware products are created by leveraging generative AI, announced today that it raised a $3 million seed investment led by Unlock Venture Partners with participation from PSL Ventures and the newly created Mayfield/Pioneer Square Labs AIStudio Fund. With this round of funding, the company will be expanding the team refining and building its platform.

“I know what it takes to define and ship great products,” said Andy Liu, Managing Director of Unlock Venture Partners, and former VP at VIZIO. “Enzzo is reimagining the process to amplify the abilities of product companies and manufacturers to take an idea, understand the requirements and cost, and get it to market faster with higher quality than ever before. It is a real game-changer for all hardware-related companies.”

Defining new products is challenging enough for software, but hardware’s unique variables and regulatory requirements add complexity. Companies and teams creating hardware are interested in moving faster from a vision to an in-market product but must start by defining the product and developing requirements, which typically take weeks to months. The definition phase is critical, as any hardware changes become increasingly expensive as development progresses, underscoring the critical need for comprehensive requirements and risk assessment from the outset.

To address these problems, Enzzo empowers teams to define innovative products and their requirements faster and more efficiently than is possible today – from weeks or months to days – saving time and expense. Enzzo runs in modern web browsers and leverages the power of foundation models along with company-provided data to prompt, synthesize user inputs, and then generate key outputs. The service features product management expertise accessible via a chat interface, a collaborative workspace for team members and partners to work on requirements, and document generation capability to accelerate the definition of new products.

“Enzzo represents what we believe is the new way that product teams will work by leveraging gains from AI in combination with human creativity to define and create hardware products faster,” said Ford Davidson, co-founder and CEO. “We are thrilled to have awesome investors helping us to grow the company and catalyze the next wave of hardware product innovations.”

Enzzo is a spinout of Seattle-based startup studio Pioneer Square Labs. “I have known Enzzo CEO Ford Davidson for over 20 years and we worked closely together building Dashwire into a successful acquisition by HTC in 2011,” said Geoff Entress, Managing Director. “Ford’s incredible background helping create new category devices and services at Microsoft, HTC, Amazon and, most recently, Meta make him the perfect leader to build Enzzo into a massive player in the hardware space.”

About Enzzo
Enzzo, Inc. is a Seattle, Washington-based company founded in 2023 by product innovators who have worked on award-winning products at startups and tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Samsung, HTC, and Roku.

About Unlock

Unlock Venture Partners is an early stage venture capital firm run by founders and operators that invest in world-changing technology companies based in Seattle and Los Angeles.

About PSL Ventures
PSL Ventures is a venture capital fund located in Seattle, WA. The fund is affiliated with Seattle-based startup studio Pioneer Square Labs. The organization partners with exceptional founders at the earliest stages to help build and invest in market-defining technology companies, primarily based in the Pacific Northwest.

About Pioneer Square Labs (PSL)
Pioneer Square Labs is a Seattle-based startup studio that creates and launches technology startups.

About AIStudio Fund
AIStudio Fund is an investment vehicle backed by Mayfield to invest in AI spinouts of Pioneer Square Labs.

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Word-of-Mouth Commerce is the Next Evolution of Influencer Marketing

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Aspire.io drives word-of-mouth commerce at scale for 900+ global giants and high-growth DTC brands, cutting through the noise of traditional paths to purchase.

Fighting rising acquisition costs, the sunsetting of third-party cookies, and the dwindling returns of once highly-profitable advertising channels, marketing leaders are shifting their channel mix towards a source of unmatched returns: letting consumers themselves (and people they trust) do the selling. Aspire.io, the world’s leading word-of-mouth commerce company, has built a powerhouse platform and industry-leading Agency to drive revenue in the way commerce began – trusted, word-of-mouth recommendations through ambassadors, influencers, affiliates, customers, user-generated content, and social ads to drive efficiency across paid, owned, and earned.

“With rising ad costs and the loss of cookie tracking, the best brands are going back to the basics, tapping into their communities to drive sustainable growth,” said Anand Kishore, CEO at Aspire. “Word-of-mouth used to be associated with unpaid, unscalable growth, but today is highly scalable, profitable, and efficient.”

Traditional, brand-produced content is no longer effective, especially with younger Gen Z audiences who crave authenticity, realness, and low-fidelity content. Consumers want product recommendations from trusted, familiar faces and peers with 69% of buyers trusting influencer recommendations. Plus, marketing channels such as email and websites are losing the consumers’ attention to social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram – which are now search, content, and point-of-purchase powerhouses. The distance between inspiration and transaction is shorter than ever, and Aspire operationalizes word-of-mouth marketing at the largest scale and on the biggest stage – social media platforms.

92% of consumers trust recommendations over a company’s messaging and 73% of online shoppers agreed that user-generated content made them more confident when purchasing. With the world’s largest creator marketplace of 1 million+ influencers; an industry-leading Agency Services team with over 100 subject matter experts; customizable, flexible workflows; and trusted first-party data integrations with social networks, Aspire helps leading brands find influencers, manage customer advocacy campaigns, create ads, and optimize revenue performance – all in one place. Marketers can consistently improve attributable ROI through the power of word-of-mouth generated content and maximize time and resource efficiency with product fulfillment, customizable workflows, seamless brief sending, and content approval.

Aspire’s word-of-mouth commerce platform helps ecommerce teams maximize conversions, drive revenue, and lower content production costs. Additionally, Aspire’s in-house, full-service agency has helped Fortune 500 companies and fast-growing e-commerce brands alike quickly develop and execute high-impact word-of-mouth campaigns with over 600,000 campaigns and $100M has paid out to creators. With bespoke, performance-driven strategies for household names like M&Ms, Keurig, Samsung, Dyson, and more, Aspire’s Agency Service team offers a unique blend of technology and transparent, upfront pricing and fees.

“Aspire unlocked the ability for us to attribute value to our influencer program,” said Lauren Rueter, Influencer and Community, at RugsUSA. “We can now reliably track the impact of conversions, engagement, and impressions that come from word-of-mouth marketing.”

About Aspire

Aspire.io is the world’s first word-of-mouth commerce platform that leverages your brand’s ambassadors, influencers, affiliates, customers, user-generated content, and social ads to accelerate marketing results across paid, owned, and earned channels. Since 2014, Aspire’s industry-leading software platform, combined with our award-winning Agency Services team, has served household names such as M&Ms, Keurig, Samsung, HelloFresh, Dyson, and many other high-growth ecommerce companies while paying out $100M to creators around the world.

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