KBank to be payment gateway for crowd-funding plantform

Teeranun Srihong, president of KBank, said crowd-funding would be a mega-trend of fund mobilisation in Thailand for the next few years because in the digital era, technology was opening new opportunities for businesses and artists.

KBank believes it can be a tool to facilitate payment services for the campaign owners who require funds, the portal website and the campaign supporters. Having the payment system overseen by a bank will also make it trusted by those worried about fraud.

Crowd-funding can be a solution |for small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups. By focusing on digital |technology, the bank believes it can |jointly develop other platforms with Asiola, besides providing a payment gateway.

Teeranun said that although KBank would earn fee income from this partnership, that was not its motivation. The bank wants to participate in new markets, and crowd-funding is creating flows of money in the digital system.

In the first phase, Asiola will offer crowd-funding platforms to artists who are inspired to conduct campaigns and want funds from their fan base to support their campaigns. The returns from this phase will be reward-based.

Supporters can give funds from Bt50 to Bt500,000 for each campaign.

If the fund-raising fails to reach the target, KBank as the payment gateway will give money back to the campaign supporters.

Asiola expects six to eight campaigns |per month, a number that should |double next year, said Jon Lor, a founder of Asiola.

Asiola believes that around 84 per cent of the artist campaigns using its crowd-funding platform will achieve their fund-raising targets because they have sufficient fan bases and can use social networks to communicate with their fan clubs, said Montonn Jira, one of the founders of the Asiola website.

Montonn said the next phase of Asiola’s crowd-funding programme for SMEs would be equity-based, which will have to be supported by the KBank network.