Singapore Uses AI to Give SMEs Access to International Trade Opportunities

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) are partnering with six private sector partners to create a Proof of Concept hybrid business data and digital solutions hub.

The initiative will leverage on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to facilitate the internationalisation and digitalisation of SMEs. The six partners are GlobalLinker, Mastercard, SAP, Yellow Pages and 99%SME (DBS Bank and SingTel).

While SMEs are often said to be the pillars of the economy, SMEs often face difficulties in achieving access to cross-border trade opportunities, or financial services.

Concurrently, solution providers with innovative and relevant SME solutions – ranging from logistics, professional services, financing or payments – face challenges in reaching out to these SMEs. The POC aims to provide a platform to address these challenges and bridge the gaps.

These are the difficulties that the initiative, named Business sans Borders aims to solve by attempting to facilitate quick and intuitive access to digital services, interoperability between SME ecosystems, a variety of digital services geared towards SME trades, and of course a sandbox to test and deliver these services for SMEs.

And the initiative already has a couple of features to be tested and developed by the first quarter of 2019, like:

The aforementioned multi-ecosystem sandbox, containing anonymised SME data, which can be used to initiate new trading opportunities or services through digital discovery
Services App Store for the promotion of new and relevant services to SME ecosystems and SMEs
Smart AI Engine to match demand and supply of services and products between SMEs across different SME ecosystems

The imitative will also seek further involvement from interested startups as well as established industry players in developing technical frameworks and potential governance structures for the exchange of anonymises SME data.

Featured image via Monetary Authority of Singapore