THE WAY TO GO: T-Melmax founder Abdul Mushir believes the company’s online payment system will help SMEs simplify and reduce errors that can stem from conducting transactions manually.

PAYMENT-GATEWAY solutions provider T-Melmax Sdn Bhd is urging small- and medium-scale enterprise (SME) directors to ditch their cheque books and instead “rent” an online payment system from the company.

Abdul Mushir Che Chik, T-Melmax founder and chief executive officer, even goes so far as to say that T-Melmax’s only direct competitor are “people who write cheques.”

“When an SME director has to write something like 20 or 30 cheques a day, he or she may make mistakes,” he said.

“Then, when the cheques are presented at the bank, a clerk has to key in the information manually and this could result in even more human errors, resulting in payment delays and time wasting.”

There are many types of payments that SMEs have to make — such as salaries, Employee Provident Fund contributions and income tax, as well as disbursements to suppliers and subcontractors.

“All this can be done with just a few clicks of the mouse instead of writing cheques, an outdated and tedious task,” said Abdul Mushir.

A better way

T-Melmax offers SMEs an online payment service for just RM99 a year and RM1 per transaction.

“This is very affordable because it could normally cost a few hundred thousand ringgit for an SME to set up a payment gateway on its own. Plus, an SME would have to spend extra to maintain the gateway,” Abdul Mushir said.

Making online payments also has another advantage — SMEs no longer have to despatch discs containing employees’ and suppliers’ bank account numbers to banks.

“Believe it or not, there are cases of the discs going to the wrong banks. Why not just transmit the information electronically?” he said.

Abdul Mushir claims T-Melmax is a pioneer in online payroll systems and has been servicing SMEs since 2003. “We have about 2,000 SME customers, We know their needs,” he said.

Its SME-centric service is an e-payment solution called the MaxPaygate Link Microsoft Excel (MXL).

“It is easy to use because most SMEs are familiar with the Microsoft Windows operating system and spreadsheet application Excel.

“MXL comes in the form of a plug-in, which can be downloaded from our site,” Abdul Mushir said.

The solution was jointly developed with Microsoft Corp, with T-Melmax investing RM1mil in its development.

Abdul Mushir claims MXL will deliver cost savings of about 30% by reducing human error when SMEs make payments.

Blue-chip customers

T-Melmax cut its teeth in the payment-gateway business by providing a channel for business-to-business payments on RHB Bank’s payment gateway.

“We started in 2002 when nobody wanted to make transactions over the Internet (because of trust issues). We knocked on many doors and one of those that opened was RHB.

We told the bank we would provide the business-to-business payment channel at no cost to it and that it could engage in a trial run for free for three months,” he said.

RHB accepted and became one of T-Melmax’s first customers. Five years later, CIMB Bank and MBF Finance also became its customers. “We set up a payment gateway for MBF Finance while providing a business-to-business channel for CIMB. By then, more companies and organisations were getting used to transferring up to millions of ringgit via the Internet,” said Abdul Mushir.

Besides growing itself in the local market, T-Melmax also has regional plans.

The company is close to signing a contract with a prominent Indonesian bank and is intending to set up office in that neighbouring country soon.

Abdul Mushir would not elaborate further but said T-Melmax wants to be a regional player in about a decade’s time.

Asked about T-Melmax’s competitive advantage, he replied: “A lot of people can write software and sell it but not many companies can provide a pay-as-you-use deal like ours.”

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www.t-melmax.com