Filipino-controlled fintech firm gains reputation as the fastest growing automation in income opportunity

AFILIPINO-CONTROLLED, but Australian-based fintech firm by Smart Asset Management (SAM) Digital Technologies that is developed on the blockchain platform has the potential to grow by as much $3.5 billion in just one year with the launch of its own utility coin as well as the roll out of an array of digital and conventional businesses.

Recently, the company inked a partnership with Kinerjapay (Kpay) of Indonesia, an omnichannel payment platform that allows consumers to shop online with various payment services, such as credit card bill payment, utility, phone bill, healthcare insurance and direct transfer to anyone at their convenience.

With its Kpay partnership, SAM Digital has appointed Anjar Nugraha as Regional Director for SAM-KPAY Indonesia. Anjar is also working as a fulltime cryptocurrency and Forex trader.

In addition, SAM rolled out the preorder of utility cryptocurrency coin SAMKOIN, The coin, which functions as a transaction tool “that makes it easy to record in the blockchain's necklace,” is also scheduled to be listed in Probit and Hotbit.

“The conventional method of the entrepreneurial journey through sharing economy is now fully understood. You should be proud that SAMKOIN is a utility coin that gets recognition from those two important sources,” Rommel

Santos, founder and Chairman of SAM Digital said. He added, “These are the Austrac of Australia and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

Already SAM is gaining reputation across the Asean and the Australasia regions as the fastest growing automation in income opportunity with digital and conventional business developments.

Amongst its latest partnership is a collaboration with Manila, Philippinesbased Best Venture Company, headed by its chief executive officer (CEO) and President Dra. Joyce Trillado Gepollo.

According to Santos, SAM strives to unify micro and macro enterprises for building foundation of a mutually beneficial and an all-inclusive business ecosystem for peer-to-peer acquisition, provision and sharing of collaborative economic values. SAM allied with its parent entity- SAM Digital Technologies, intends to provide an all-encompassing bundle of services to its platform users with lucrative incentives and accelerative profitable opportunities.

SAM Digital Technologies possesses an intricate amalgamation of trailblazing Digital and Conventional businesses including, SAM Remittance, SAM e-wallet, SAM Ride, SAM Agri, SAM E-university, Remjohn Petroleum, and others.

OVER the past four Mondays, my fellow IPRANS, including Ipra global President Philippe Borremans, have written about topics from the maiden edition of Ipra Philippines’ Communitalks webinar series. So far, you’ve read about communication trends this year and beyond, navigating the multichannel universe, and survival tips from the points of view of a PR agency and a government institution.

I’m capping off the Communitalks series on PR Matters by sharing my take on how you can engage in the practice of sustainable corporate social responsibility (CSR)— moving beyond philanthropy and ensuring the survival of your CSR programs even amid challenging times. For those of you who are already doing CSR, some of what I will share may already be familiar. This can be a refresher of sorts for you. For those who are thinking of going into CSR, this can arm you with enough of the basics to be able to figure out what to do next.

For easier recall and application, I’ve come up with a list of five key things to remember:

1. Create programs that are integrated into your value chain.

THIS just means that your CSR framework and programs should stick closely to your core: your vision, mission, and values. It’s important to remember that not any and all programs are appropriate for your organization. It’s not that you can’t run them—you can. But they probably won’t be sustainable if they don’t match with your organization’s objectives and business strategies.

In Maynilad, we make a conscious effort to ensure that our CSR and advocacy programs are aligned with our core business—providing water and wastewater services. Our advocacies fall under five main categories: water, sanitation, and hygiene (W.A.S.H.) infrastructure, W.A.S.H. education, community empowerment and social entrepreneurship, environmental responsibility, and disaster response.

The connection of the first two categories to our core business is obvious. how do the other three figure in our value chain? Our community empowerment and social entrepreneurship programs revolve around water access for marginalized communities. Programs with environmental thrusts are anchored on protecting the finite resource on which our very existence depends. Disaster response activities have both humanitarian and stakeholder engagement objectives, effectively affecting relationships with groups and institutions that enable us to operate as smoothly as possible.

2. anchor programs on greater goals.

THIS can be as simple as closely aligning your program goals and objectives with those of your company or organization, or with the rest of your group if you belong to a conglomerate. Or you can take it a step further and tie your goals to something bigger: the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG), for example, or your country’s sustainability or economic development plans.

It’s not enough to have objectives that are confined to your CSR program alone. Link them with bigger goals so you can operate with greater purpose. This ties neatly with the value chain integration principle that I previously mentioned. Just make sure to align with goals that are relevant to your program and your organization, and that these goals are realistic for you.

3. take advantage of strategic partnerships.

WHILE you can definitely run your CSR programs alone, it is always good practice to spread your wings and explore collaborations. You can start with something as simple as tapping partners within your organization: groups that don’t directly handle CSR programs, but can help broaden the impact of your advocacy.

Take the case of Maynilad’s Advocacy team. We partnered with personnel from our water treatment plant in Muntinlupa City for a program called “Timbayan,” a portmanteau of the words timba (bucket) and bayan (nation or people). Timbayan involves thoroughly cleaning buckets used to hold water treatment chemicals and distributing these to beneficiary communities, usually public markets or blighted areas. These recycled buckets can be used to store water or to hold goods such as fish for sale in markets. This simple partnership allows our organization to reduce our solid waste contribution, while providing beneficiaries with an item that they can use around the house or for their businesses.

You can go a bit beyond your own organization by partnering with companies within your conglomerate, if you belong to one. It would be easier to align objectives and strategies with such companies, given that you are within the same “family.” If you’re feeling more adventurous, explore collaborations with companies to which you have no direct connection. They can be in the same industry as you or in a totally different one that has strengths to complement your own. You may also opt to partner with a government institution, a local government, or a cause-oriented organization.

Your partnership possibilities are limited only by your own imagination, so be creative and don’t be afraid to explore. Just bear in mind that you have to be fully aligned with your potential partners, in terms of objectives and even vision. Misalignment can cause clashes during implementation, and could very well lead to the demise of your joint CSR project.

4. Go beyond just who you know.

WHILE a wide network is important in establishing partnerships and propelling projects forward, you can’t just rely on whom you currently know. People come and go. Elected officials have terms of office. Cabinet members serve at the pleasure of the President. Company executives resign or retire. If you anchor your programs on personalities alone, your program’s chances of survival are greatly reduced.

Your CSR programs have to be built on strong foundations: integrated into your value chain, anchored on bigger goals, strengthened by partnerships. Programs with strong roots create bigger ripples, leave a more lasting legacy, and have a higher probability of success and long-term survival.

This is not meant to diminish the value of having a vast network. After all, as public relations practitioners, our contacts and our relationships with them are worth more than their weight in gold. This is meant more as a reminder that success is not driven by your network alone. Sound strategies, coupled with a solid network, can spell the difference between good enough and exceptional.

5. never lose your development mindset.

WHILE we need to think of so many things when coming up with and running a CSR program, you should never lose sight of why you’re implementing such programs in the first place. I’d like to think that I speak for all of us CSR practitioners when I say that, ultimately, we want to make even a little bit of a difference in people’s lives, in society, in the world we live in.

When you do CSR work, look beyond the numbers that you need to achieve to ensure good ratings in your performance scorecards. Focus on the impact that your programs will have on the lives of people around you: your communities, your stakeholders, your partners.

You may have a million and one reasons for embarking on a CSR journey. Let social development be one of them. Ultimately, your authenticity and sincerity will shine through.

about last week…

LAST week’s column by Richard Burgos failed to include a brief introduction of the author, which we usually have on our boiler plate. Our apologies for the oversight, and here’s that introduction that we missed:

Richard P. Burgos is the director of the Science and Technology Information Institute of the Department of Science and Technology. he is a two-term past chairman of Ipra Philippines and a juror at the Ipra Golden World Awards. PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the United Kingdom-based International Public Relations Association (Ipra), the world’s premier organization for PR professionals around the world. Abigail L. Ho-torres is AVP and Head of Advocacy and Marketing of Maynilad Water Services Inc. She spent more than a decade as a business journalist before making the leap to the corporate world.