In medium, small, and micro-entrepreneurs, a category briefly referred to as MMS, where the majority of companies in Croatia are located, the domestic fintech scene is trying to facilitate and accelerate everyday business operations with its solutions. For micro-entrepreneurs, who make up 89.9%, small ones at 8.8%, and medium ones at 1.1% of a total of 144,259 entrepreneurs (in 2021, according to Fin’s data published last year), fintech tools have been designed to strengthen their business development and help them cope more easily with market demands and competition.
Support for Payments
Support for micro, small, and medium entrepreneurs in the ASEE group is provided through the company Monri, said Viktor Olujić, a member of the Management Board of ASEE & Monri Payments, whose services are grouped into a business line of commerce, including e-commerce, and HoReCa (hotels, restaurants, and cafes). He noted that merchants know Monri for being one of the first in Croatia to offer the SinglePOS solution, a unique POS device for accepting payment cards from multiple banks. In addition to supporting merchants with in-store payments, he added, Monri provides a complete solution for e-commerce, i.e., accepting cards online, where it is the market leader in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and North Macedonia.
– Today, around 10,000 merchants in several countries use Monri’s services. In addition to payment services, it also provides software support in the HoReCa channel, retail, wholesale, and manufacturing. With the brands Remaris and Gastrobit, we have been present in HoReCa for over a decade with software for cash registers, fiscalization, billing, and complete digitalization of business processes in hotels, restaurants, and cafes. In retail, wholesale, and manufacturing, we are represented with the Thor solution that meets resource management, warehouse management, and production tracking. At the parent company ASEE, we develop solutions for call centers and digital document management, from receiving and using documents in the process to their digital signing, sending, and long-term archiving, Olujić listed.
In Season and Out of It
Monri’s solutions, he continues, enable payments with additional integration modules, automatic tracking of inventory status in e-commerce or in wholesale and retail warehouses. He also says that it is possible to conduct quick daily inventories in cafes and restaurants, register guests in the eVisitor system using hotel software, and monitor efficiency and upgrades.
– In this regard, Monri ensures compliance with legal and payment regulations and provides support. Entrepreneurs in the HoReCa channel are currently preparing for this year’s tourist season, so there is a noticeable increase in interest in our solutions in hotels and restaurants, particularly in the area of small and fast payment transactions. Our Remaris hotel solution enables tracking of business processes in hotels, from planning and preparing food in the kitchen, distributing food and drinks in bars and restaurants to integrating additional services such as automatic parking billing, booking and billing for the use of halls and wellness services, or integration with accommodation booking platforms. In the area of fast transactions, there is a noticeable increase in interest in using the Start cash register, which allows for issuing invoices, fiscalizing invoices, and accepting card payments using a simple small device, Olujić explained.
He noted that there is interest throughout the year for solutions that optimize communication management with clients via phone calls or Viber, WhatsApp, and social media, as well as generally exchanging documents with clients and partners.
Large companies, banks, insurance companies, and large distributors of document management, contact, and consumer communication solutions integrated several years ago, and now Olujić sees increased interest from medium and small enterprises to integrate systems that provide a unified view of the client from the moment of sending an offer and signing a contract, billing to resolving any complaints. Given that they operate in multiple markets, Olujić says they also advise entrepreneurs on opening representative offices or branches abroad and simplify paperwork.
Free for the Customer
The services, said Danijela Višnjić, regional manager for Croatia at Leanpay, are offered through partners/merchants with whom they enter into cooperation agreements. To ensure this, they have developed online applications that connect the entire sales process, from transferring all financial details to the customer at the time of purchase to automating approvals and exchanging information in real-time.
– With unique solutions, using API integrations and plugins for the most commonly used e-commerce platforms such as Magento, OpenCart, Prestashop, WooCommerce, the merchant becomes a one stop shop, offering customers a unique way to finance and purchase in one place. The customer has a display of installments for each product and can check their limit or initiate the payment process with one click, and we provide, for example, unique marketing solutions and customization of the number of installments to the business model. Today, a merchant must negotiate payment acceptance in installments with each card company or bank, and with Leanpay, the same solution can be offered to all customers. In just five minutes, a customer can receive payment approval or limitation, which reduces costs on both sides. We analyze business and challenges with partners, and for the customer, paying with Leanpay is completely free, which is a significant novelty in the Croatian market, Višnjić said.
