A Year in Review 2019 - Building a Strong Foundation for Scalability and Growth

Another year has come and gone and as per what's become a bit of an annual tradition, it's time to look back into the past and provide a quick recap on our progress this year.

While we roll out new features in product releases throughout the year, they are usually centered upon a certain theme or project. In 2017, we were focused on building out core capabilities of the Biz4x system as our launch in 2016 had mainly focused on integrating core services within a single platform.

In 2018, much of the focus was on building out capabilities of the world's first online banknotes marketplace, which was launched in Singapore in 2018, Hong Kong in 2019 and will see a 2020 launch in Malaysia. We also debuted the open and flexible policy enforcement feature for money services businesses which allowed our customers to create their own compliance policy based on various risk factors and risk scoring.

In 2019, customers saw a complete revamp of the way currency stock is managed in Biz4x with the introduction of the multi-stock feature. Many of our releases were related to multi-stock, which was launched to cater to many of the features that the community had been asking for such as the ability to create different stashes of stock, assign different values to different denominations or record different (often electronic) methods of payment.

Business Management

Multi-stock

The debut of multi-stock led to a fundamental redesign in the way the Biz4x system handles and manages stocks of currencies. Several new concepts and features were introduced in this release.

• Stock Definition - Through stock definition you can create different stashes for your stock in each currency. For example, you might decide that you want to create a stock only for e-money and name it EMSGD, or one for old notes and name it OLDSG. Each new stash of stock or category you create must be linked to one currency as well as a payment method. Stock definitions allow for an open and flexible way of valuing different denominations as well as having multiple stashes for a single currency.
• Company, Outlet and User Stock - Stocks can be activated and deactivated for users. Once a stock has been defined, it can be activated for use by the company account, outlet account or a user account. As tellers are recording a transaction, they can choose which stash of foreign and local stock (that was earlier defined) at the company, outlet or user level they wish to credit or debit a transaction from.
• Stock Transfer - The ability for stocks to be assigned at the company, outlet or user level necessitated the stock transfer feature. Through stock transfer, stock can be transferred between outlets and users, as well as between outlet branches and company accounts. In order to track such transfers, the Stock Transfer report was introduced.
• Stock Report - A new daily Stock Report was created to track changes in stock across all levels of an account, be it company, outlet or user.
• Negative Stock - Negative stock is a feature that allows users to record Buy and Sell transactions even if the branch outlet does not have enough physical stock of a certain currency. This could be used in instances where cashless transactions are occurring. If negative stock is enabled, tellers can record transactions even if the stock of that currency falls below zero once that deal is settled.

We've created a multi-stock guide as well as a negative stock guide to walk you through the changes, so do download these for more information and details.

New Customers

• Centralised customer database - Customer records were saved and linked at the individual outlet level in previous years. With Biz4x being increasingly used for multi-branch outlet currency exchange operations, it made sense to centralise customer records, so they can be accessed by different outlets within the same company for KYC, customer due diligence or risk assessment.
• Individual and Legal Customers - Instead of having a single format for recording customers, we created two distinct types of customer records, individual and legal customer records. Legal customer records can have more than one contact associated with them, and these contacts can be in an active or inactive state. More business information can be added in legal customer entries such as company type and registration number.

New Transactions

• Travel Information - Tellers can now record additional information linked to each transaction such as travel details. The Extra Info tab that has been added to the new transaction interface allows for the input of details such as country of destination, travel purpose, travel dates as well as flight ticket information.
• Draft Receipt - Tellers have the option of printing a quotation for customers with the new Print Quote option on the New Transaction interface. A quotation can be printed for customers who wish to view the Buy and Sell price for different currencies before settling a deal.
• Receipt Format - We often get many requests from new customers for a customised receipt. In evaluating whether or not we proceed with developing a new receipt format, the team often takes into consideration the impact this has on the entire market and community. In Botswana, for example, approximately 40% of the bureaux de change there have access to Biz4x, hence we decided to roll out a new receipt format for them that allowed customers to sign off on receipts.

We are happy to consider custom receipt requests from time to time, so if you'd like a receipt that is tailored specifically for your business, feel free to get in touch at support@biz4x.com, and we can provide you with a price quote and timeline.

Regulatory Reports

Over the years, we have progressively provided support for regulatory reporting in different countries starting from Singapore to Malaysia, Hong Kong and now, Indonesia in 2019.

• Indonesian regulatory reports - We added 5 new regulatory reports for our growing Indonesian community: the B0001 Monthly Report, the Customer Declaration Form, the Customer Information Report, the PPATK Report and last but not least, the Transaksi Jual Beli report.
• Hong Kong Statement of Transactions - We've updated the Hong Kong Statement of Transactions report due to some changes in its format.

Your Rates

• Rate Automation - The ability to set a profit margin and have retail exchange rates update automatically based on selected time intervals was another feature requested by the community in the last couple of years. Rates are automatically refreshed between 1 min to 1 hour. We further added a notification that would update tellers if the rate had changed while they were in the midst of recording a transaction so they could ensure that the transaction was settled with the latest rate.
• ZWL - We have seen much growth in the African region where forex bureaus are increasingly opting to sign on to Biz4x. In response to a new government regulation requiring the use of Zimdollars in Zimbabwe, we began supporting the set up of rates in the local ZWL currency this year.

In the year ahead, we will continue investing in the African region, and are working on a major partnership to onboard the majority of Uganda's forex bureaus in 2020.

Account

• Landing Page - Biz4x is an integrated solution that consists of a number of modules, each catering to different business needs. Over the years, the system has become increasingly complex due to all the added features. In recognition of the various types of Biz4x users and their day-to-day responsibilities, we have allowed for users to set their own default landing page. A teller for example, might wish to log in to the dedicated Create Transaction interface rather than the main dashboard.

Mobile App

• Ionic 4.0 - The Biz4x mobile app has been updated to Ionic 4.0 which gives it a boost in speed and performance.

In the past few months, we've been working on upgrading the technical infrastructure of Biz4x so that the system can continue to scale as well as support new features, and an even larger global community with greater stability.

Sneak Preview of What's in Store for 2020

In the first half of 2020, we're continuing to focus on building out more advanced capabilities on the business management front. These include:

• Deleted transactions report
• Reconciliation reports
• Top customers report
• Tools for more robust risk-based analysis
• Basic accounting support for payments and expenses
• New versions of the mobile app for Android and iOS

2020 will see the actualization of our digitalization initiatives which we are planning to roll out in 4 separate phases.

As always, we love to receive feedback, so do reach out to us at support@biz4x.com for any thoughts or comments on the above.