SuperRich, a well-known Thai based foreign currency exchange company,has launched a digital payment card called the Visit Thailand Card as part of a joint venture between itself, Mastercard and 2C2P Plus, a digital payments operator.
The company has been consolidating its position as providing the best currency exchange rates at its growing number of outlets, many of them situated in popular shopping malls. It also has a large network of street-side exchange offices. SuperRich has certainly attracted the attention of people looking to exchange foreign currency at much better rates, to the extent that it now has a million customers per month, and handles more than 100 billion baht in transactions per year.
The idea behind the Visit Thailand Card is to move tourists and locals alike towards a cashless society as part of the Governments Thailand 4.0 plans.
The president and chief executive of SuperRich, Piya Tantivachyanon, was quoted as saying, “SuperRich sees potential to promote the Thailand 4.0 scheme through digital payments and better serve customers with the increased safety of using digital money rather than cash.”
A new card costs just 150 baht and can be topped up using foreign currencies that Superrich will exchange at favorable rates.
Mr. Piya was also quoted as saying, “If tourists still have money on the card at the end of their trip, they can exchange the value for their own currency at SuperRich branches before returning home.”
Superrich anticipates that it will issue 50,000 of its new cash cards within the first three months of operation, and expects to see five billion baht in card transactions in the first year. In addition, the company plans a mobile app that will enable cardholders to check their balance and pay using QR codes.
Mr. Piya was also quoted as saying, “By mid-2019, SuperRich will issue a card for outbound tourists for Thais who travel abroad that can help securitize their payments,” adding, “This new service will enable us to differentiate ourselves from our rivals and gain new revenue streams from the 1% merchant fee on sales that will be split between 2C2P Plus and Mastercard.”
Indeed merchant fees are one of the benefits of 2C2P Plus’s solution as it can be less expensive for merchants for transactions. SuperRich’s embracement of the technology will likely be a catalyst for the payment platform to blossom in Thailand.
Cash is still used for more than 80 per cent of transactions in the Kingdom, with the other twenty per cent completed on a variety of digital platforms.
