KUALA LUMPUR, 20 MARCH 2009 – A Malaysian financial software firm has released an e-payment solution for local SMEs using Microsoft Excel that will reduce business costs.
“MaxPaygate is a state-of-the-art e-payment product that links to Microsoft Excel (MXL), and aims to improve efficiency and reduce the cost of doing business for SMEs (small medium enterprises) throughout the country,” said Abdul Mushir Che Chik, MSC (Multimedia Supercorridor) status company T-Melmax chief executive officer.
“MXL, targetted at SMEs, is a plug-in which runs on Microsoft Excel 2007 that enables companies to easily make payments for their staff salary, statutory payments and supplier payments to the bank via the Internet,” said Tyson Dowd, Microsoft Malaysia senor director, local software economy.
T-Melmax is an online payment gateway services provider, offering bulk payment and collection solutions to SMEs and corporates. Established in 2002, it is an award-winning ICT company registered with the ministry of finance and an active MSC status company.
Open standards and SME needs
“The software, made possible through the interoperability elements of the ISO standard known as Office Open XML, is available to SMEs without upfront licensing costs and customers will only be charged based on usage,” said Dowd. “Originally developed by Microsoft, the Office Open XML format is a standard for word-processing documents, presentations and spreadsheets that is intended to be implemented by multiple applications on multiple platforms.”
T-Melmax’s Mushir said the company’s market surveys indicated that a large portion of SMEs have not adopted ICT due to costs and lack of IT expertise. “Most SMEs we talk to are familiar with Microsoft Windows and Excel, thus developing our e-payment solution on this industry-standard platform makes a lot of business sense to our customers. There’s no re-learning needed,” he said. “Our partnership with Microsoft to introduce innovative technologies such as MXL will strengthen our brand and we hope to be listed on Bursa Malaysia in one year.”
Made possible by local funding
This solution was developed by T-Melmax, an investee company of venture capital firm Malaysia Venture Capital Management (MAVCAP). “We must be consistent with the changing environment. Staying abreast with change and competition means streamlining processes to become more efficient. E-payments can vastly improve productivity and reduce the cost of doing business,” said MAVCAP chief executive officer, Husni Salleh. “These benefits become even more apparent during these challenging economic times, and we believe T-Melmax and this pioneering solution will be of great assistance to SMEs,” he added.
“What is remarkable about T-Melmax’s MXL solution is that, by leveraging on the ISO Office Open XML standard, the solution has this ability to store and manage business data in documents, resulting in lower cost of automating business processes and, at the same time, enhancing global competitiveness of local SMEs,” said Dowd.
