In May 2022, I sent this e-mail to our team at PayMongo reaffirming our company mission.


Team,

We are at an interesting period in our history. You may have read on the news about the economic downturn and the looming recession across global markets. While no one can predict the future and how things will play out, we must prepare ourselves to brace for turbulence over the next several months.

Our company is in a wonderful position. We have a great team, a healthy cash flow and built the beginnings of a solid foundation. I want to take this economic downturn as an opportunity for us to revisit our plans and targets and, most importantly, reaffirm our mission as a company.

I’m a big believer in how challenging periods in history often bring out the best companies. I want to make sure that we weather this storm and come out stronger than ever. We need to make fast and decisive adjustments to changing circumstances to do that. And no matter what happens, it is even more critical that we stay true to our mission and what we stand for.

Our mission is to grow the internet economy of the Philippines.

The backbone of an emerging Philippine economy are entrepreneurs and small businesses. PayMongo lowers the barriers to succeeding in the digital age by providing them with the financial tools, services and education to make doing business easy.

The last three years have been humbling. I’ve realised that there are hundreds of ways we can approach this mission. We’ve learnt that building financial services products for the internet isn’t straightforward, we must stand by a few core principles that drive us as a company.

First, we must build unparalleled payments infrastructure and products. At the core of what we do as a business is accepting payments and moving money. This means we cannot compromise on the quality of our payment products: from what our merchants (and their customers) see and experience to everything that happens behind the scenes.

Our work encompasses maximising payment acceptance, simplifying how merchants process payments and helping them capture more revenue across different platforms. We’re building technology around people. We must not only build products that are easy to use; we must also educate our customers on how best they can grow their business in an increasingly digital world.

Second, merchants must be able to access and use our products and services with minimal effort. Our strength relies on the success of our merchants. It must be just as easy for a solo entrepreneur as for a medium-sized business to onboard, manage and use all of our products and services.

We must offer seamless and fast onboarding and enable merchants to start accepting payments and move money in the shortest possible time. This is a lot easier said than done in an industry surrounded by policies, regulations and partnerships. It demands a change in mentality. We need to continue being proactive, challenge the status quo and work with our partners so we can always put the interests of our customers first.

As we build more products, we mustn’t overlook the importance of a simple and easy user experience. Over time, I hope that we are seen not as the only option for small businesses but as the best there is. I want to anchor our work to this identity we aim to achieve in the future.

We want our products and services to be accessible to as many businesses as possible. That is why we need to work to make our services fast, products accessible and cost a lot less (not more).

Third, to become the engine of growth for emerging businesses, we must build financial services for our merchants that are simple and accessible. Building enviable payment products will always be part of our DNA, and there’s a lot more that we can create. It is, however, increasingly becoming more apparent that our mission does not stop there.

To grow the internet economy, we need to ensure that our merchants have access to financial services that enable their growth. These include providing them with the ability to manage their finances, move money, optimise revenue and better operate and monitor their business at scale, among many other things.

Working in finance over the last few years, I’ve come to believe that entrepreneurs and small businesses have minimal choices when it comes to financial services. Such lack of choice holds back many companies from growing. We must take different approaches to finance so we can enable more growth for our merchants and, in turn, for the internet economy as a whole.

Fourth, the internet economy goes beyond just activities online, and so must our mission. In recent decades, the internet has undergone radical transformations. Before, users mostly typed texts on websites. Then, when we got phone cameras, we added more colour to our interactions with photos and videos. Today, we never leave our houses without the internet in our pockets. Case in point, I wrote this letter on an online document while sitting in a café. I travelled using a ride-sharing app, and I paid for my coffee using my mobile wallet.

The internet isn’t just online. It no longer is constrained within the limits of our screens. Building for the internet economy means creating products that enable our merchants to serve their customers, no matter the platform. We must use the internet as an enabler to create new opportunities for our customers.

Fifth, as a technology company, we must put technology at the core of everything we do. We are in the business of using technology to build the best products and services for our customers. Our approach to creating products must be anchored on building better experiences for our merchants (and their customers) than anything that exists today. We never take shortcuts for the sake of making money. Our goal is to make money so we can bring in more value to our customers and, in turn, build better products and services.

We are also product-led. We’ve built the company to support long term investments in our products. As a result, many of what we do (and will do) will require novel engineering work and new forms of business models, policies and partnerships. We will constantly challenge the status quo—and we will take charge of paving the way for a new mindset.

Our products will speak for the future that we stand for. Our customers (and future customers) love us because of our brand, values and products. This is why, as a product-led company, we must work together to bring the best possible products so that everyone can benefit—not just our customers but also the entire ecosystem.

Finally, we exist because of our customers. I’m very proud of what we have built over the last three years. I couldn’t be more excited about what’s in store for us. As we take the company to the next chapters, we must never forget why we are here today. Our customers will always be at the centre of everything we do. We do what we do so that more entrepreneurs and small businesses can find their success stories and change the world in their own ways.

The future is going to be bigger than any one of us. It will be beyond what we can imagine. But I am more than certain that it is one that will be made by all of us. So as we continue to write our story, we must never forget this. Everything we do needs to answer the most important question, “Does this help startups, entrepreneurs and small and medium businesses grow and succeed?”

Francis