Boost has been named as “Digital Disruptor of the Year” for Malaysia in the 2nd annual IDC Digital Transformation Awards (IDC DX Awards) at the Digital Transformation Summit held at Aloft KL. The awards celebrated the best local digital transformation initiatives in the country and honor their achievements in successful digital transformations through the application of digital and disruptive technologies.
Boost is a homegrown lifestyle mobile wallet established in 2017. They are currently the leading mobile wallet in the country with 3.2 million users (and counting) and 43,000 online and offline touchpoints nationwide with a goal to be Malaysia’s preferred mobile wallet. Their merchant base comprises of 3 categories – cash-based merchants such as hawkers, pasar malams and food trucks, established merchants with store fronts and payment systems tied to point-of-sales (POS) terminals and lastly, online merchants.
The Digital Disruptor category aims to recognize organizations that are aggressively disruptive in the use of new digital technologies, business models, and utilize the ecosystem awareness through leveraging the likes of Big Data and Analytics and IoTs to constantly innovate. As the country winner, Boost will represent Malaysia at the regional awards in Singapore on 25 October 2018.
“We are ecstatic yet humbled to receive this recognition as the Digital Disruptor of the Year, especially within a rapidly evolving digital payment space in Malaysia. From inception, the evolution of Boost has been based on one key philosophy – to revolutionize the way consumers transact in their daily lives. Our approach has always been to create customer-centric services that offer seamless, simpler and convenient digital solutions. At Boost, that meant focusing on understanding consumers’ everyday pain points and resolving them through digitizing cash and services”, said Christopher Tiffin, CEO of Boost.
Boost’s stepping stone in championing digital development and society started from digitizing telecommunication services by reimaging prepaid top-up via an app before evolving into a full mobile wallet which offers extensive functional and fun consumer features such as scan & pay at merchants, paying for utilities and parking, P2P money transfers ,“Go Dutch” for bill splitting, donations, gifting and “Shake Rewards”. Other notable milestones include an expanding footprint in East Malaysia and forging partnerships with UnionPay International to expand regionally, and companies such as 11Street and DeliverEat to create omni-channel experiences in a single app.
“As a homegrown company, we foresee Boost being a key enabler in driving digital transformation through digital mobility and adoption. We believe digital transformation is an important catalyst that will drive growth, jobs, economic development and well-being in this 4th industrial revolution. And with this, we will continue to challenge ourselves to reimagine more consumer experiences through a relevant and inclusive ecosystem”, Tiffin further commented.
“When considering the country winner for the Digital Disruptor category, we looked for an organization who is a leader in their ecosystem and is driven by their customers, embraces risk taking, considers technology and data as its lifeblood. More importantly, the organization must demonstrate the ability to create reasons to change consumer behavior and the way people operate in a digital-first world”, said Baseer Siddiqui, Senior Research Manager Software Research Group, IDC ASEAN.
Siddiqui also added, “Amongst the digital payment providers in Malaysia, Boost scaled unprecedentedly especially in getting people to jump on the mobile payments bandwagon – their user base increased from 810,000 in January to 3 million in August this year, that’s an impressive 270% increment within 8 months! They also added unique features to the app that we believe will significantly alter the landscape of digital payments in Malaysia down the road. Hence, the reasons why they won the category.”
6 other categories were presented at the IDC DX Awards. The winners are:
- Digital Transformer of the Year – CIMB Bank Berhad’s CIMB EVA
- DX Leader of the Year – Dato’ Amiruddin Abdul Satar, Managing Director and President of KPJ Healthcare Berhad
- Omni-Experience Innovator of the Year – Hong Leong Bank Berhad’s Predictive Customer Intent CRM System
- Information Visionary of the Year – Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia’s (SSM) MYDATA
- Operating Model Master of the Year – Air Asia Group Berhad’s Security Solution for Online Booking
- Talent Accelerator of the Year – Astro Malaysia Holdings Berhad’s Digital Culture Accelerator Program
