Lalamove boosts UX and growth with HSBC’s business solutions

Lalamove, an on-demand delivery platform, improves its customer experience and operations with HSBC’s comprehensive solutions of PayMe API, Corporate Card, Omni Collect and HSBCnet, as it continues to drive global growth.

Background and Scope

Founded in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), Lalamove is an on-demand delivery platform for businesses and individuals in Asia and Latin America. Through its mobile and web apps, individual and corporate customers are able to input the pick-up/drop off locations and connect with a fleet of delivery vehicles and professional driver partners. 

As Lalamove constantly strives to improve its own operations and customer service experience, the team was seeking a responsive and dedicated banking team that can provide cash management solutions which align with their business model across all the markets in which they operate.

Challenges

Most users prefer paying driver partners for the delivery service with cash, while the remaining users prefer using credit cards. To improve the customer experience, the company was looking for an additional cashless solution which can be integrated easily from a technical perspective.

Each month, the company pays online service providers by using bank transfers. To do so, the procurement team manually keys in the beneficiary information for each payment through their online banking platforms. The process was inefficient and administratively taxing.

The Transformation

The first phase of the relationship began with the opening of an operating account with HSBC in HKSAR. This enabled the company to manage its payments and other banking activities easily online through HSBCnet. To complement the operating account, the company wanted to focus on enhancing the customer experience by offering more cashless payment options to its customers. With the growing popularity of the local mobile wallet, PayMe, the company integrated HSBC’s PayMe API into their mobile and web apps. This direct link between Lalamove’s in-app wallet and PayMe platform allows their individual and corporate users to instantly top-up their Lalamove in-app wallets to pay for delivery services. 

HSBC Corporate Card was issued to the company to be used primarily for online service expenses. This helped to streamline the number of payments by Lalamove each month into a single payment to HSBC at the end of the billing cycle. The Corporate Card also offered the company 54 days of interest free credit, which helped improve working capital and eliminate the need for funds to be set aside, allowing the company to deploy capital for other business needs.

Replicating the success in HKSAR, Lalamove subsequently digitised its collections and streamlined its reconciliation processes using HSBC’s Omni Collect and Virtual Account solutions. As the company continues to grow its existing presence in over 11 markets and expand into new markets, such as Bangladesh, the centralised finance team in HKSAR is able to easily access the company’s global cash position and monitor real-time activity for each of its operating markets supported through HSBCnet, a single digital banking platform.

Success

• HSBCnet allowed the company to streamline banking management on a centralised basis.
• Enhance mobile user experiences with more cashless payment options, making the transaction journey seamless and effortless for the customers.
• Cashless payment options now account for 90% of company’s collections (up from 50%), which streamlined reconciliation efforts and reduced time spent on administrative tasks.
• The company is able to further harness financial benefits by riding on Corporate Card monthly billing cycle, with credit period extended up to 54 days.

SVF Licence Number: SVFB002

Reminder: “To borrow or not to borrow? Borrow only if you can repay!”