Bank Islam Malaysia has partnered with MESINKIRA, a cloud-based retailing platform for MSMEs, to offer underbanked microentrepreneurs a chance to digitalise their businesses through an end-to end integrated mobile business management solution.
Microentrepreneurs that will benefit from the collaboration are Bank Islam‘s microfinancing customers under iTEKAD Programme.
The iTEKAD programme was established by Bank Negara Malaysia to assist low-income microentrepreneurs to strengthen their financial management and business acumen towards generating sustainable income.
Through this partnership, microentrepreneurs will be able to digitally record their sales, accept multimode payments as well as do inventories, business expenses, and bookkeeping which eventually generate a proper financial statement of their businesses in the future by using MESINKIRA’s mobile app.
The integrated bookkeeping functionality linked to the business’ current account also empowers microentrepreneurs to improve their creditworthiness.
MESINKIRA’s integrated solution also helps microentrepreneurs to go cashless and safely receive digital forms of payment, like cards, digital payments, near-field communication (NFC) payments, and e-wallets.
Bank Islam will also leverage MESINKIRA’s Impact Dashboard solution to assess the microentrepreneurs’ performance. This will enable the bank to analyse the microfinancing programme’s effectiveness.
Mohd Nazri Chik, Group Chief Financial Inclusion Officer at Bank Islam said,
“This partnership will provide growth opportunities for microentrepreneurs and help them become financially literate.
The effort is aligned with Bank Islam’s commitment to creating social impact, where we advocate real economy and nurture community upward mobility through entrepreneurship and social finance ecosystem.”
Syed Omar Almohdzar, Chief Executive Officer of MESINKIRA said,
“Our collaboration with Bank Islam is intended to address financial literacy and, at the same time, improve financial inclusion for the underbanked microentrepreneurs segment.
MESINKIRA’s innovative tools will lower costs and widen access to financial products, enabling these businesses to develop and thrive. MESINKIRA further improves the microentrepreneurs’ net earnings and, more importantly, builds better creditworthiness to this ecosystem.”
