Beyond the shopfront: Evolving for Growth

 

For many customers, MoneyMax is a familiar name in their neighbourhood. Behind its shopfronts, however, the business has been changing. Having started in pawnbroking, the company has expanded into real estate and automotive financing, while reworking how it handles payments across its outlets.

The changes reflect a wider shift in what customers need and how they expect to transact. For Lim Chun Seng, Deputy Group COO of MoneyMax, keeping up means looking beyond the traditional role of a pawnshop.

“People still see pawnbroking as a very old-school business. But when you think about it, what we really provide is access to financing,” he said.

As MoneyMax developed new services and changed its operations, its relationship with DBS grew alongside the business. The bank’s support extended from its early pawnbroking operations to new sources of funding and the practical work of digitalisation.

Finding New Ways to Fund Growth

One milestone came when MoneyMax sought to enter automotive financing. Its CEO proposed loans to help customers renew their Certificates of Entitlement (COEs), and DBS helped get the business started.

“DBS has been a crucial partner in our business journey and was among the first to support our pawnbroking business,” Chun Seng said.

As the company continued to grow, DBS introduced MoneyMax to the bond market and supported its first Medium Term Note issuance. This gave the company access to a funding option beyond traditional borrowing, broadening the ways it could finance its business.

Drawing on DBS’s experience and expertise, MoneyMax completed the issuance, followed by a share placement. These transactions marked significant milestones in the company’s development, reflecting an approach to funding that was evolving in tandem with its broadening business interests.

Introducing Digital Payments 

Growth also made everyday operational challenges harder to ignore. MoneyMax relied heavily on cash for both disbursements and repayments. Across its network of outlets, even small inefficiencies added up.

At the same time, digital payments were becoming commonplace. Customers expected the convenience they experienced elsewhere, making a change to MoneyMax’s payment operations increasingly necessary.

After working to understand these challenges, DBS identified the need for a payment solution that could support the business across its outlets. Through DBS RAPID, MoneyMax digitised both collections and disbursements.

The work involved multiple systems, different outlet formats and several vendors. Because the systems handled customers’ money, getting each transaction right was essential. The rollout required extensive testing across both MoneyMax’s pawnshop and retail systems, with DBS working closely with the company to stabilise and fine-tune the arrangements.

“Without that level of collaboration, digitalisation at this scale would have been very difficult. Today, it’s hard to imagine that processes that once took hours manually are now so much more seamless and efficient,” Chun Seng said.

MoneyMax now relies significantly less on cash. Its operational processes and reconciliation, the work of checking payments against records, have also become more streamlined. The changes address both sides of the challenge: customers’ expectations for digital payments and the demands of managing transactions across a large outlet network.

A Partnership That Grows with the Business

From launching automotive financing and accessing the bond market to digitalising payments across its outlets, MoneyMax’s evolving needs called for different forms of support. 

For Chun Seng, the constant has been DBS’ understanding of the business. “Whether it was supporting our expansion into new business areas, digitalising our operations or introducing new funding opportunities, DBS always understood our business goals and what we needed next,” he said.

As MoneyMax explores further opportunities, Chun Seng looks forward to continuing its partnership with DBS. 

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