The Singapore-based point-of-sale (POS) provider Qashier on Thursday announced that it received SGD 1.2 million in a seed financing round, led by early-stage venture capital firm Cocoon Capital and San Francisco-headquartered VC Hardware Club.
Qashier was founded by Christopher Choo and Frank Zhao Liang and incubated by Antler. With the new funding the company plans to further expand into Southeast Asia, grow its team, and invest more in product development, building an omnichannel commerce platform for SMEs.
The management said that their POS system has already been deployed in hundreds of businesses such as food and beverage merchants, salons, and machine retailers. It combines a payment hub with an open platform software for third-party apps. The terminal is available without high upfront costs and supports all major credit and debit cards, as well as mobile payments and e-wallets.
The Qashier App Store offers additional services, such as loyalty programs, table booking, and stock management. Merchants can track and consolidate data across multiple applications and automate tasks like daily settlement and accounting.
“Many SMEs have been left behind due to the high cost and complexity of adopting new technology,” Choo said in a statement. “Qashier is providing the tools used by large corporations to SMEs at a fraction of the cost, empowering them to succeed in today’s competitive economy.”
Michael Blakey, managing partner at Cocoon Capital, said that the offline retail market in Southeast Asia exceeds USD 1 trillion and that there is a huge gap in the adoption of digital payment solutions due to the complexity and expensive price. Blakey joined Qashier’s board of directors.
“We have never met a team that has executed and grown recurring revenue as fast as Christopher and Frank at such an early stage and with limited capital,” said Jerry Yang, general partner at Hardware Club.