Founders Spotlight: George Padin of Spenmo on to Drive the Philippines Fintech Towards Innovation

Fintech is one of the fastest-growing industries penetrating Southeast Asia. With its unprecedented growth, what’s the next thing that can happen? At the top of the list is seeing more solutions catering directly to the needs of SMEs across Southeast Asia and this young startup is carving its way toward that path. 

Spenmo is the go-to accounts payable (AP) software focused on serving the Southeast Asian market – with the Philippines as one of its core markets. The company offers easy and accessible business-to-business (B2B) payables management, which helps them track and categorize spending, and close their books on auto-pilot in 90% less time. This is perfect for fast-moving companies experiencing rapid growth.

The Techshake team sat down with Mr George Padin, the Country Head of Spenmo Philippines, and he mentions that he is focused on driving the Philippines’ Fintech toward greater innovations. 

Tell us about your background and your role in Spenmo.

I have been in the tech industry for more than a decade. Currently, I am the Country Head for Spenmo Philippines. It is a payables software company that focuses on B2B payments. Basically, everything that comes out of the company, money-wise, can be tracked, controlled, and done within the Spenmo platform. Right now, Spenmo is focusing on multiple markets across Southeast Asia, including the Philippines as one of the core markets that we are expanding into. The Philippines is a huge market! 

What's the story behind the success of Spenmo?

Spenmo’s Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Mohandass Kalaichelvan, a former executive at Grab, saw the gap in the B2B on accounts payable (AP) category. We came in for the opportunity to provide a solution and fill that gap. So, we started building and formed a team that allowed Spenmo to come to life, and today here we are, building a magical payables experience in the SEA region.

Tell us more about Spenmo. What are your services and how can they use them?

Spenmo is an all-in-one payables platform that provides businesses with comfort, control, and visibility on how, when, and why money is expended by the organization. We help businesses manage their internal spending through Bill Pay, corporate Smart Cards, Tracking and Approval workflow, and Accounts Payable (AP) reconciliation into an integrated view. 

Our key product feature is the corporate Smart Cards which can be issued to each company employee. These cards have advanced features to easily manage business expenses and can be used for any online purchases and card terminals that accept Mastercard. This allows them to have full visibility of employee and corporate expenses through the Spenmo dashboard.

We believe that the ability to track expenses, down to the smallest amount, has many benefits for the business. One of these benefits is the visibility of how well the company is managing their finances which could allow them to access credit or loans. Currently, Spenmo has processed over PHP 20 billion in business payment transactions on its platform. Truly, Bill Pay eliminates borders and provides accessibility to paying suppliers from around the globe. Through a reliable approval and tracking workflow, Spenmo helps organize typical messy processes for internal spending and bills payment through its platform.

Aside from Spenmo, you're also active in many other things. Can you share with us how you manage these? Maybe you can share values you live by, philosophy, or a story. Entrepreneurs would love to hear your thoughts.

Outside Spenmo, I am a managing partner at an early stage focused venture firm called Buko Ventures. This is a partnership I share with extraordinary people who share the same passion and goal – to improve the Philippines' tech ecosystem. Our dedication has led us to take calls outside of our working hours and listen to pitches from potential and current founders trying to raise funding for their start-ups. We do this because we see ourselves as operators that can add value to these founders, and because we’re operators, we can help them succeed and enter the next level.

Internationally, I have made 20+ angel investments in high growth start-ups. Most of them have gotten into Y Combinator. My overall dream and goal is to learn first-hand from these founders all around the globe, namely in Africa, Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. That’s what keeps me excited since we belong in a developing country. There is really an advantage to interacting with developed world countries and seeing their perspective. It is really exciting to learn from them. 

All of these investments and programs are at an early age in the tech scene and I want to be a part of it at a foundational level.  

What do you think will be the trend in the innovation scene in the next five years?

I want to talk about where we are now and why the Philippines is becoming a hot market. It is because of the Iron Triangle – (e-commerce, logistics, and fintech) that is already connected. E-commerce, logistics and basically, payments are already in a maturity stage which opens many opportunities within our country. 

We can see how Gcash and Paymaya lead their own respective categories. GCash with over 46 million users dominates the entire peer-to-peer e-wallet while Paymaya with over 40 million users is ruling over the enterprise category. Just take a look at their [Paymaya] POS. It’s everywhere. It is a very interesting space. 

With the Iron Triangle strongly connected, [I think] in the next 5 years, I am extremely excited to see what the future of the fintech [industry] will come out of here in the Philippines. Most will be funded by local founders because based on my first-hand experience with dealing with the central bank, the BSP feels more like enablers rather than regulators which makes it very good for the entire fintech industry to thrive in this market. 

What do you think is Spenmo doing in the succeeding years? What is your vision for Spenmo in the next few years? 

For the Philippines market, my vision is to be the most preferred business-to-business payment wallet and payables solution for SMEs in the country. Our goal is to provide a magical business to business payment experience. It’s like having the ability to send money without any borders, review the company’s expenses in one powerful dashboard, efficiently handle employee cash reimbursements, and issue corporate cards to your employees without any long processes. 

We want to simplify expense tracking and business payables more convenient for more Filipino businesses.

Learn more about Spenmo here.