The idea is for musicians to display their accounts’ QR codes on their guitars or on banner stands as they perform, enabling listeners to send tips even when short on small change.

Go-Pay benefits from this partnership by accessing the institute’s 3,000 members (and their fanbase) spread out in multiple cities, mostly in Jakarta, while musicians benefit by, first, having an alternative means to receive tips.

“Second, transactional records. Musicians will have data on which areas are most profitable to perform. IMJ, as an organisation, will also gather data, which it could use for many things. IMJ may [for instance] use the data to select which musicians to promote,” said Go-Pay CEO Aldi Haryopratomo.

He added that while the company would not deduct commission fees on tips, musicians were expected to eventually use the e-wallet’s financial service offerings, which include home loans and education loans.

The e-wallet’s revenue would come from selling such financial services.

IMJ co-founder Andi Malewa said all the musicians equipped with Go-Pay were professionally trained performers and that both parties planned on expanding the partnership to more musicians in more cities.

He said that the Go-Pay partnership was one of many efforts to improve the welfare of street musicians since 2014. Other efforts include training members to create YouTube videos and to market on Instagram. Looking forward, he continued, musicians could display their QR codes on social media and receive tips from online viewers.

“We want to prove that the quality of many street musicians is on par with any other musicians. The streets are just a stage for us because we have limited opportunities, limited funds and limited support,” he said.

PaySay is a fintech, headquartered in the UK with an offshore office in Lahore, that aims to enable local freelancers and education academies to receive payments from Europe by offering them a UK-based bank account.

The process is very simple: open the website, enter the freelancers page, sign up using an email address and the system will generate UK account details for you in a matter of seconds with details like sort code and account number, among others. You can then use these with your foreign clients who then wouldn’t have to pay you through an international bank transfer, saving both parties from the inconvenience. Once you have money in your account, you can either cash it out or transfer it to your local bank.

Does this mean you will have a fully functioning UK-based account with bank card or an app to do your transactions? No. “It can only be accessed through the PaySay platform. Technically, these are sub-accounts distributed and managed through us as one can’t sign up with a British bank if they are not based in the UK. |This is why it’s not possible to directly use the bank’s portal,” |says CEO Farrukh Mian.

At the moment, they have on board three digital banks (similar to SimSim in Pakistan) – Tide, Viva Wallet and Starling — and customers are given accounts from one of these institutions.

The startup was founded by Farrukh Mian, Zahid Khan and Dr Philip Mendrzyk – veterans in payments, software and financial services – and was commercially launched in early 2017.

“At my previous job, I was working specifically within the remittance side and saw the initial days of the likes of TransferWise, WorldRemit and Azimo, which is where I got the inspiration from and realised the need for some innovation in the industry,” Mian recalls.

PaySay started out as a hybrid remittance service: bringing together the Western Union model of high street vendor network and the relatively new digital service as offered by TransferWise and others. But since then, they have entered new lines of business, including payment solutions for freelancers and online education academies that have clientele in the UK.

Currently, the local freelancing community mostly depends on PayPal accounts of friends and family abroad and Payoneer (which does operate in Pakistan) – two global brands with wide recognition in the industry. So how does a much smaller player hope to take them on in their own backyard? “The former has the unnecessary hassle of getting multiple layers involved, and the latter charges exorbitant fees, making it a highly expensive alternative solution,” says the CEO, adding that “ours, on the other hand, is relatively faster and slicker due to the smaller size”.

While PaySay has two revenue streams – 0.25 per cent and 0.50pc charges on both the transaction and foreign exchange rates on standard and express payments, respectively. However, for Pakistan-bound payments, they have forgone the former and just restricted themselves to the forex margins. “For all other countries we have both the income sources but for Pakistan, we don’t have the first one to keep ourselves more competitive. Plus, the State Bank doesn’t allow any charges on the principal, either – if one wants to be eligible for their rebates,” says Mian.

The startup has raised some half a million pounds (about Bt20 million) in two angel investment rounds in 2016 and 2018. But why would a fintech startup with access to venture capital (VC) firms in the UK and Europe go for such small rounds when the sector is ripe with funding there? “The ecosystem here is a hotbed for fintech, particularly in the remittances space, which is why we wanted to diversify our product range a bit more before we approached a VC to make our offering more lucrative,” explains Mian.

Since the launching of this freelancing payment service three months ago, they have floated around $2 million (around Bt61.5 million) whereas in the remittance business, over a billion dollars have been transacted through PaySay. A back of the envelope calculation, based on their margins, gives roughly an income close to 500,000 pounds.

The problem, however, goes beyond a lack of payment solutions for freelancers.

“It’s not that there aren’t other options but more that PayPal is such a big name and has so much trust that many clients are reluctant to do business if you don’t have a PayPal account because all others are much more time-consuming in comparison,” says Muhammad Hamza, a freelance writer from Karachi. Will PaySay be able to fill in that trust deficit or will it become one of the many companies operating in the industry other than PayPal? Stay tuned to find out.

The meeting, presided over by Science and ICT Minister Yoo Young-min, was attended by chiefs from SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus, along with mobile division leaders from Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics.

The participants launched the “5G plus strategic committee” to discuss the country’s seven-year growth plan following the launch |of the world’s first commercial |5G service in April.

Participants pledged to achieve 20 per cent of market share in global 5G network equipment market by 2026. As for the 5G smartphone market, they vowed to secure the top spot by reaching 30 per cent of global market share.

“The ‘world’s first title’ doesn’t carry significance anymore,” Minister Yoo said.

“We are in global spotlight since we launched 5G commercial service for the first time in the world. … But being the first does not mean being the best.

“We thus need a comprehensive strategy between the government and business sectors.”

The meeting came amid growing attention to the 5G network since its commercial service began in April. While its subscribers surpassed 1 million here last month, concerns persist as to how to leverage the technology for industrial growth.

The participants pledged to create 73 billion won ($62.1 million, Bt1.911.45) in exports from 5G-related industry by 2026.

To achieve that, they would produce 180 trillion won in industrial output related to 5G business.

The attendants also introduced 10 key industries and five crucial services.

Among them are technologies related to virtual and augmented reality.

For the plans to work properly, Kim Tae-yoo, a professor from Seoul National University, called for deregulation.

“We need to lift regulations on the 5G service industry,” said Kim, who co-chairs the 5G strategic committee with ICT Minister Yoo.

“Companies are the warriors of the 5G era, so preventing them will be something that goes against the historic wave.”

Among business leaders attending the event are SKT chief Park Jung-ho, KT chief Hwang Chang-gyu and LG Uplus chief Ha Hyun-hoi.

Samsung executive Roh Tae-moon from the company’s mobile division also attended the event.

Mobility firm Chacha Creation said it will work with two local car rental companies to introduce a new car-sharing platform, ChaCha Van service. Limo Korea and Isaac Rental Car will partner with ChaCha to provide cars for the carpooling service scheduled to launch in August.

Through mobile apps, users can request the service by calling a van with 11 seats – the only type of vehicle allowed to offer driving services in Korea other than registered taxi operators. ChaCha said it aims to operate 1,000 vehicles by the end of this year.

“We are going to establish a harmonious car-sharing service that caters to the needs of all Korean people,” ChaCha creation chief Lee Dong-woo said after signing the agreement with the car rental companies.

Based on the business model first introduced by Tada last year, local mobility firms such as ChaCha have been seeking to compete against the taxi industry.

The system taken up by Tada and ChaCha involves borrowing minivans from either its own subsidiary or local car rental services. Tada supplies its 11-passenger minivans through the company’s own rental service, Socar, to avoid violating local regulations.

Drivers are banned from paid riding services other than those registered as taxis, but the regulation does not apply to minivans with 11 seats or more. The exemption was designed to help users of rental car services have safer use of larger cars that they borrow as a way to boost tourism.

“Drivers rent those minivans under a long-term contract and use them as if they are their own cars. When they accept a call for a ride, they are, in fact, suspending the contract and lending the cars to the caller. … It’s like the drivers are hired by the callers for that particular time frame,” an official from ChaCha said.

Taxi drivers say the recent slew of new ride businesses are abusing a legal loophole. Associations of taxi drivers have fiercely protested their potential new rivals for killing their jobs with the “illegal business”.

The government, for its part, has struggled to mediate the situation, although it did help draw out a consensus between the taxi associations and Kakao in eventually working together to launch their version of a ride service called Waygo earlier this year.

The controversy has spilled over into politics, with some opposition lawmakers accusing Tada of violating labour laws by hiring temporary workers for driving jobs.

“Tada drivers are temporary workers paid on a daily basis. Living under the fear of being fired, they can’t enjoy the benefits of a social safety net.

“They don’t meet the rigorous driving qualifications required for taxi drivers,” said Rep Kim Kyung-jin of the minor Party for Democracy and Peace.

Tada has refuted the criticism, saying its business is “perfectly legitimate”. The company also reiterated its plan of launching a “Tada Premium” service, hiring licensed taxi drivers running expensive cars for higher fees and better service.

Last month, Tada said its users surpassed 600,000, and more than 1,000 minivans were in operation for the car-sharing service.

According to the company’s own research in February, about 90 per cent of those riding in Tada minivans would use the service again.

But in its third annual Cyber Landscape report, the CSA said that online crime has continued to rise and now accounts for almost a fifth of all crime in Singapore.

The cyberthreat that had the biggest drop in the number of incidents was website defacement, which saw a decrease of more than 70 per cent last year – with cases falling to 605 from 2,040 in 2017.

Most of these websites belonged to small or medium- sized enterprises though larger organisations were affected too.

Two Singapore government websites were also defaced but the CSA did not give further details.

However the CSA did reveal that cases spiked last November, which was likely down to an attacker “exploiting vulnerabilities in an unpatched web server”.

The agency said 101 sites “belonging to various businesses hosted on this web server were compromised by the same attacker in a single day”.

Last year also saw a 30 per cent decrease in phishing – when fake websites are used to trick users into revealing their personal details or passwords.

There were 16,100 cases, down from 23,420, but the figure was still well up on 2016’s total of 2,512.

“Companies in the banking and financial services, technology and file hosting services made up almost 90 per cent of spoofed companies in 2018,” the CSA reported.

Cases involving software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid– known as ransomware – fell by four to 21. But this cyberthreat remains “lucrative and continues to evolve in sophistication”, the CSA warned, explaining that an aggressive form of ransomware known as GandCrab had infected a private financial institution here last February.

The number of cases involving command-and-control servers – computers controlled by hackers to send commands and receive stolen data – fell by 60 per cent from 2017.

Chief executive of the CSA and commissioner of cybersecurity, David Koh, said cybersecurity incidents made some of the biggest headlines last year, with data breaches affecting organisations large and small.

He added: “We have to learn from these incidents and push further in our cybersecurity efforts collectively as a nation, so that we can defend ourselves against increasingly sophisticated threats and prepare ourselves for a digital future.”

In its report, the CSA said there were 6,179 cybercrimes last year, up from 5,351 in 2017 – a rise of around 15 per cent

Cybercrime now accounts for almost 20 per cent of all crime in Singapore, with one in five incidents being investigated under the Computer Misuse Act. These crimes were up by around 40 per cent last year compared to 2017.

Online scams remain a concern too, with 2,125 e-commerce scams reported last year, costing victims around S$1.9 million (Bt43.19 million) in total.

“Seventy per cent of such scams took place on e-commerce platform Carousell, and involved electronic products and tickets to events and attractions,” the CSA said.

The number of business impersonation scams, where criminals trick their victims into giving them things like money or information, rose from 332 in 2017 to 378 last year.

The CSA said this cost businesses here almost S$58 million last year, almost a third more than they lost in 2017.