Smile API Weblog

The atmosphere at SaaScon PH 2023, the country's largest SaaS conference, was vibrant and filled with industry leaders, visionaries, and tech enthusiasts. They were all eager to delve into the future of the rapidly growing SaaS and tech industry in the country. This year's event, held on March 28, 2023, at the Marriott Grand Ballroom, focused on how SaaS adoption could catalyze digital transformation in Philippine businesses. The conference provided valuable insights and opportunities for companies to streamline operations and boost productivity. The eight-week challenge, hosted by Sprout and Kaya Founders, brought together Filipino innovators who collaborated and pitched their groundbreaking SaaS ideas. One of the event's highlights was the presentation of the top three startup pitches of Impact '23. Our CPO, Jan Pabellon, was the first runner-up in the esteemed Accelerator Program. Jan pitched Smile’s solution for doing pre-employment background checks quickly and easily by using digital methods to enable candidates to share their data with their new employer and with their consent. - Impact ‘23 judges recognized the immense potential of Smile API's background check solution for employers. By seamlessly gathering a candidate’s employment and income data, Smile empowers human resource professionals and hiring managers with comprehensive and verified insights needed to make informed decisions about their new hires. The second runner-up, Umwelt.AI, presented Nikki—an all-in-one AI HR officer. Nikki is a chatbot designed to provide round-the-clock support to employees, just like a human HR officer. Olivia Technology Group Inc. took home the grand prize with their winning app that can scan and digitize receipts. Their solution helps HR departments and employees streamline their reimbursement and liquidation process. The Impact '23 Accelerator Program indeed was a great success, with Smile API emerging as the first runner-up. The pitch competition showcased some of the brightest and most innovative minds in the Filipino SaaS industry. It was inspiring to see how these startups are leveraging technology to solve real-world problems and drive digital transformation in businesses. SaaScon PH 2023 served as a great platform to connect with industry leaders, share ideas, and learn about the latest trends and innovations in the SaaS space. We look forward to the next edition of SaaScon PH and the continued growth of the SaaS industry in the Philippines.

Barely over a year since Smile API's founding, the company has made a breakthrough in the Open Finance space in the Philippines by expanding its coverage of employment and income data service to 40 million Filipinos. Open Finance framework deals with finance data as a whole instead of just bank data. Jan Pabellon, Chief Product Officer of Smile API, said the 40 million Filipinos include basically anyone who is employed whether they are a gig worker or salaried employee. "We have dramatically expanded our footprint as our service now covers 40 million Filipinos consisting of 25 million salaried employees, 11.7 million self-employed individuals, and 4.1 million government employees," Jan disclosed. "We're unlocking better financial opportunities for Filipinos. This is now the major milestone we have reached at Smile." https://youtu.be/ZdsmGfHNdsQ Smile has so far linked with over 30 employment platforms, covering majority of workers in the Philippines, including several others in Indonesia that the company is able to link to in Smile's Artificial Programming Interface (API). Smile's API functions like a pipeline that allows for the smooth sending or exchange of employment and income data among workers, employers and financial services firms. As for its business customers, Smile is currently focused on financial services providers who are dependent on employment and income data to deliver their service or to lower their exposure to financial risk. "Since day one, our vision for Smile API has been clear -- to be the one trusted source for employment and income data in Asia and right now there's a big opportunity here in the Philippines," Jan said. New Features, New Data One of the latest data that Smile is now able to provide is a worker's identity, employment history and insurance contributions data from the Philippines' social insurance systems. What aided the recent development was the creation of several new features to Smile's “Wink Widget” product: a JavaScript SDK (software development kit) to allow Smile customers’ end-users to provide permission for Smile to access their data. - Smile launched support for file uploads as well as enabling automatic recognition and digital conversion for certain types of documents, like photos, screenshots or scanned copies of documents, converting them into a machine-readable format via OCR or Optical Character Recognition. Improvements were also made to the API structure itself to accommodate the Wink Widget's features, all designed to help Smile's customers or the various companies and organizations get trusted employment and income information from their end-users. Benefit From Own Data Smile API CEO Jerome Eger pointed out that Smile empowers workers by practicing the same principle of Open Finance, and that is information from individuals whether employment or income data are owned and should be controlled by them. Jerome explains Smile helps workers to benefit from their own data. Whenever they use the Smile API interface it carries the information basically with the consent of the worker to a slew of use cases like cash lenders, buy now pay later, earned wage access, banks, among many others. "At Smile API, we believe that access to your own data is a basic right,” Jerome said. "We serve as a bridge between you and your financial goals. Because if you have no data, you are excluded from a lot of services that ensure livelihood

We are happy to share that Smile continues to grow its customer base as it lives by the faith that one's employment and income data should be a basic right -- much like the legal doctrine of "beneficial use" or the right to use one's property in any lawful manner to gain a profit, advantage, or enjoyment from it. In our press event held a couple of days ago, we announced that among the latest Filipino companies to have joined our portfolio of customers are B2B logistics provider TaranaPH and fintech startup Plentina. Prior to them, we had linked with over 30 employment platforms, covering majority of gig workers in the Philippines, including several others in Indonesia. The new business customers were convinced to use our Application Programming Interface (API) technology as it connects people's  employment and income data to financial services easily and hassle-free. Plentina as an app-based Buy-Now-Pay-Later service, lauded our ability to deliver data even for the unbanked and underserved. "Fifteen percent of our current customers can be served by its platform. As we develop both our technologies, we can see a chance of that percentage growing higher and higher over time. Smile API will allow us to unlock more than 90% of the Philippines’ labor force based on their scope and coverage," said Plentina Product Manager Ashley Uy. "With Smile API, we project an improvement of around 12% in our approval rates, with the partnership moving forward," Ashley added. Our latest announcement of customers also highlighted our flexibility in industry or worker coverage. Catering almost entirely to fintech-related use cases, we are also able to add value in the logistics B2B space with Tarana PH. Tarana PH COO Analyn Quizon, said our API platform will help their company to reduce recruitment processing time. They will use Smile's services to quickly expand their delivery fleet to meet customers’ growing demands. "Prior to Smile API, 20,000 applications used to take weeks to process but it can now be done in a matter of seconds. With Smile, we are now smiling," Analyn quipped. Analyn also shared they were looking forward in working with us to onboard Tarana's merchants and partners to its API including the integration of their company's two other platforms the fulfillment platform TupadPH and e-commerce platform BayanihanPH. Finance Data Pipeline Our CEO Jerome Eger clarified that in contrast to a data processing company, we are an information infrastructure with our API network serving as a pipeline or bridge that solves the gap between the public and financial institutions specifically on accessibility of employment and income data. By making employment data history in API format available, we are able to help fintech companies to develop and offer lending and credit products to the marginalized sector, mostly the unbanked, which the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas disclosed represents 41 million or 53% of the country's population. Smile's business model is the company's humble contribution in addressing the country's need for innovations within the Open Finance framework, a modern system in the field of financial services that allows for the application of a more holistic approach in improving financial inclusion since it deals with finance data as a whole and not just bank data. Jerome pointed out that we are able to empower workers by practicing the same principle of Open Finance, and t

Smile API is Empowering Users to Benefit from their Own Data Digital transformation has ushered in a data-driven world. Data is being generated at a pace never seen before: about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data a day by some estimates. Most people don't realize it, but they're generating and sharing many of this data, often times about themselves, everywhere. They do it when they go to school, when apply for a job, when they buy something, when they transact at their bank, when they share a photo, watch a video, or play a game. As this kind of data becomes ubiquitous, many businesses have started to reap the benefits: figuring out ways to be able to use this data for their benefit. For example, advertising companies have used this data to allow advertisers to target specific types of people based on their activities, interests or habits. However, it has become ironic that the the very people who generate and share lots of data rarely benefit from it themselves. But that’s about to change. What if people can benefit from the data they generate? Imagine a world where people can use their own personal data for their direct benefit. What if owners of this data can use it to their advantage to get access to more services? What new opportunities will that create? If you’ve ever tried to apply for a loan or a job, you know how tedious it can be. You’ll need to get various documents to fulfill varying requirements. This is hard for the applicant, but it also poses challenges for an employer, a financial institution, or a bank. This problem is exactly what Smile API aims to solve! Smile API allows people to use their personal data, specifically their employment and income data, for their own benefit. In turn, they get to access to more opportunities such as getting offered better financial services or job opportunities. Users are able to take control of their own data – they get to decide which data is shared with whom. Smile will not share any type of data without the owner’s full consent. Smile simply acts as a bridge between users' systems of record for their employment and income data (such as their social insurance system, payroll system, and others)  and with parties needing this data, such as financial services companies, employment verification companies and others. Every time this is done, Smile gets the user's permission first. In short, everything is done with the user’s total awareness and control, and is done in a secure and transparent way. The value of employment and income data in financial services Employment and income data is especially useful in the financial services industry. Traditionally, companies in the financial services industries, particularly in lending as an example, had to rely on demographic data and credit scores to get an indication of a person's financial standing and creditworthiness. While these traditional sources of data are valuable, data such as employment and income data or what the industry calls "alternative data" provides a more complete picture of the customer. While it can be argued that this data is being asked for by financial services companies from their customers already, typically the existing process for doing so is mired in inefficiency and bad user experience. Companies would ask for a copy of people's employment certificate, payslip, tax return or other proof of income. They would then have someone manuall

It’s been an amazing journey so far here at Smile! It’s been less than than three months since our official launch, and barely a year since we started, and already our product has grown leaps and bounds thanks to the support and feedback from our partners and customers! As we come to the end of 2021, and look forward to 2022, I thought it would be useful to look back and reflect on where we have started, and where we plan to go. A look back: how we defined what we wanted to build Since day one, our vision for Smile API has been clear: to be “the one trusted source for employment and income data in Asia” We have also been very clear in the initial set of customers we wanted to serve: financial services providers who are dependent on this data to deliver their service or to lower their exposure to financial risk. We have found that there is significant inefficiency and friction in getting this kind of information, which has led to: Friction in verifying and onboarding customers, which in turn leads to poor customer experience Higher cost and effort in identity and employment verification, which in turn leads to higher interest rates for consumers Lack of reliable and consistent data on employment and income, which leads to greater risk for financial services providers Limited access to financial services, especially to those who do not have traditional employment, as the cost and risk for serving these types of customers may be too high using traditional means and criteria for verifications The last point in particular has been particularly helpful for us to further sharpen our initial product and value proposition at launch: “what if we could provide, at least in our first iteration, the employment and income data of that segment of the population that has been growing the fastest during the pandemic, but has been traditionally underserved simply because they do not fall under traditional categories of employment?” We refer of course to gig workers: those who engage in temporary and flexible jobs—either as their main source of income or as a source of additional income. By providing the means for them to easily share their information from the various digital gig platforms which have surged in popularity during the pandemic, we could empower them to have more control over their own data and gain access to better financial services and opportunities. What we then set out to do, after deciding to zero in on helping gig workers initially, was to then focus our efforts on a market that presented the most promise for the kind of constituents we wanted to serve. We found the Philippines in particular to be the most promising: it had a large, young and growing population of working age, a vibrant economy, and had experienced the largest growth in gig worker activity anywhere in the world during the pandemic. According to global payments firm Payoneer, the Philippines experienced “208% year-on-year growth” in the first half of 2020, outranking India (160%), Japan (87%), Australia (86%), and Hong Kong (79%). Building the product: from concept to launch With the problems we wanted to solve and value proposition to potential customers clear, and the constituents and market we wanted to serve defined, we then set out to embark on an aggressive product development process that took several months. We put together different ideas on how we can solve the problems that we ha