Welcome to the Smile API Blog!

Metro Manila, Philippines - The gig economy in the Philippines is on the rise, and with it, the need for affordable healthcare and benefits for freelancers and gig workers. In the latest episode of #TheSmileAPIPodcast, Jem Chua, the Head of Operations for MetaCare, shares how her company is aggregating gig economy workers and freelancers to provide them with affordable healthcare and benefits.

In today's highly competitive and fast-paced business environment, hiring the right talent is crucial for success. A bad hire can have disastrous consequences, both financially and operationally, for organizations of all sizes.

API-based employment verification is a must-have for modern HR departments. With the increasing complexity of employment regulations and the risk of bad hires, companies need a more accurate and efficient way to verify employment history.

On March 23, 3 PM, Smile API will release the third episode of their podcast series, #TheSmileAPIPodcast. In this episode, Jerome Eger, CEO of Smile API, talks to Jove Tapiador, the President of Rural Bank of Silay City and Co-founder of GoodTech, about the challenges and opportunities facing the Fintech industry in the Philippines.

Digital solutions have revolutionized the employment background check process by automating the process, reducing errors, and improving efficiency, accuracy, and compliance, ultimately making the hiring process faster, easier, and more reliable for both employers and candidates.

Technology can help companies in credit decisioning and loan underwriting, resulting in faster and more accurate decisions while minimizing the risk of bad loan decisions.

APIs have become an increasingly important part of the modern technology landscape, enabling businesses to share and integrate data across disparate systems and applications. By addressing these misconceptions and understanding the true potential of APIs, businesses can unlock new opportunities for innovation, automation, and growth.

Welcome to our quarterly product update blog post! As the leading API for secure and accurate data verification, Smile API is always looking for ways to improve and enhance the user experience. That's why we’re excited to share what we were working on in the last quarter of 2022.

Digitalization is no longer a nice-to-have for traditional banks and has become a must-have. Automation and technology can help banks to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and make better-informed decisions. And one area where traditional banks can benefit from digitalization is by using alternative data.

When making credit decisions, it is important to consider your client's employment history and income level. This is because the applicant's ability to pay back the loan or credit is of utmost importance.

Smile API partners with Provenir and joins its marketplace to provide its customers with access to Smile API's cutting-edge technology solutions for employment data.

Smile API, the leading provider of innovative financial technology solutions, is proud to announce that it has been certified as a FinTech by the Singapore FinTech Association (SFA).

The lending market is constantly evolving, and there are many different trends that are shaping the way lending is done today. We explore some of these latest trends in this article.

Lending companies receive an incredible number of loan applications each week, yet only a fraction meet their lending criteria. By utilizing automated processing, banks and other lenders can quickly evaluate which applicants best fit these procedures- allowing them to make quick contact with those who qualify before underwriting loans in confidence.

When it comes to lending, there are several best practices that can help ensure a smooth and successful transaction. These include thoroughly evaluating the creditworthiness of potential borrowers, clearly communicating loan terms and conditions, and properly managing and overseeing the loan to minimize the risk of default. By following some of these best practices, you can ensure that your organization is not only compliant with lending regulations, but also that you are making sound financial decisions.

APIs are changing the way people interact with the world around them. APIs are one of the driving forces behind what is known as "open banking" or "open finance", a movement to make financial data more accessible so that people can make better-informed decisions about their money.

To mitigate credit risk, financial institutions can employ strategies where they can evaluate the creditworthiness of potential borrowers. This can be through extensive background checks and financial analysis, diversifying their loan portfolios by minimizing overexposure to any borrower or type of asset class, and establishing sufficient recovery mechanisms to cover any losses incurred.

Existing solutions cannot provide a complete picture of your borrowers' character, capacity, and capital. And as the global economy continues to shift online, it is more crucial than ever to have precise data on online workers' employment status and earnings. Smile is dedicated to giving fast access to the most up-to-date, verifiable information about your borrowers' identity, employment, and income, with unmatched coverage in the business.

This third quarter of 2022, we've focused on building out our platform according to market needs and customer feedback. We've listened to the need for reliable normalization and ease of ingesting our data, as well as expanded data to ensure we can support credit decisioning and underwriting processes that are important for the market.

Smile API, as the one trusted source of employment and income data in Asia, offers a win-win solution to the crucial challenges freelancers, gig workers, businesses, and financial institutions face in the gig economy.

Smile API will launch its pilot Fintech podcast on September 9 addressing the challenges in credit scoring that burden banks and other financial institutions.   Led by Smile CEO Jerome Eger, the debut episode will stream at 5 PM on YouTube, Spotify, Facebook, and LinkedIn participated in by Aian Guanzon, the business head of Global Dominion Financing, Inc. (GDFI).

Smile operates specifically as an invisible bridge between borrowers and lenders. It offers an API that makes it easier for borrowers to supply relevant information when requesting loan approvals, as traditional credit scoring may be difficult for lenders.

We’re excited to announce a set of enhancements and new features for our product in Q2 2022. Highlights include: more data sources, including all of the Philippines' social insurance platforms such as SSS, GSIS, Philhealth and Pag-IBIG, additional data points to the API, such as contributions, support for automatic event notifications via Webhooks, and many more!

You need to know what qualities your customers are looking for, and most likely, it is a safe and reliable lender worth borrowing money from. More specifically, you need to be credible enough, beneficial more than stressful, and operate legally.

Despite the threat of debt from credit or loans, the number of borrowers from newer generations are increasing, through using credit cards, online banks with loans or credit option, and BPNL (buy now, pay later) offers.

The short survey is part of Smile API's efforts in creating a win-win situation between workers, financial institutions and other businesses when it comes to availing of financal services and products, making better credit decisions, including but not limited to improving recruitment and hiring processes.

One of the latest data that Smile is now able to provide is a worker's identity, employment history and insurance contributions data from the Philippines' social insurance systems.

Smile’s API taps into employment data sources for KYC. Connecting online banks and lending applications directly to government institutions, HR systems, and gig economy platforms can make it convenient for borrowers to give access to their data and for loan operations specialists to fast-track loan application verification.

Among the latest Filipino companies to have joined Smile's portfolio of customers are B2B logistics provider TaranaPH and fintech startup Plentina.

With just one user-authorized click, Smile API can give lenders access to the borrower’s verified and most recent employment data. Through Smile API, lenders can save time and verify borrower income data for faster loan approvals. This, in turn, can help lenders process more applications in one day (or even in seconds!) compared to the limited number they process without Smile.

At the recent webinar “Let your Data Work for You”, co-organizer Smile API Chief Product Officer Jan Pabellon shared that their service now covers 40 million Filipinos, consisting of 25 million salaried employees, 11.7 million self-employed individuals, and 4.1 million government employees. This represents one of the major developments in the country’s march towards an era of Open Finance and unprecedented financial inclusion.

At the recent webinar “Let your Data Work for You”, co-organizer Smile API Chief Product Officer Jan Pabellon shared that their service now covers 40 million Filipinos, consisting of 25 million salaried employees, 11.7 million self-employed individuals, and 4.1 million government employees. This represents one of the major developments in the country’s march towards an era of Open Finance and unprecedented financial inclusion.

One of the biggest benefits of embedded finance is that it can help businesses expand their reach and reduce costs. This is particularly important in countries like the Philippines, which are struggling with high levels of poverty and inequality.

API stands for "Application Programming Interface." It's a set of tools and protocols that allow different programs to communicate with each other. APIs can provide access to a company's data, systems, and processes, making it easier for companies to extend their reach and interact with their customers and partners.

Imagine a world where people can use their own personal data for their direct benefit. What if owners of this data can use it to their advantage to get access to more services? What new opportunities will that create?

The top players in the gig economy are global players who have taken advantage of online platforms to build successful businesses. However, the gig economy is still relatively new in the market. There are no standardized systems and processes, making it hard for financial institutions and employers to gather and verify gig economy employment and income data.

In this latest round of product enhancements this quarter, we are excited to announce that we have made great progress in providing you: greater worker coverage, greater data coverage, tools to more easily test the product, means to make it easier for your users to share their data with you.

Data is the foundation of any financial service business. Without it, companies have a hard time making educated decisions.

New regulation from the Philippine Central Bank (BSP) has the potential to be a relief for the nation’s low-income borrowers, but will also trigger lenders to start reconsidering their offerings to this group.

Although the term API or "Application Programming Interface" remains alien to most people, this way of allowing various apps and system software to talk to each other has made and continues to make positive impacts on quality of living and business success.

Since day one, our vision for Smile API has been clear: to be “the one trusted source for employment and income data in Asia.”

It’s been barely three months since our official launch, and already we have launched dozens of improvements and refinements to our product.

In addressing the challenges faced by the greater unbanked and underserved populations in emerging economies like the Philippines, monetary authorities in different nations are looking into Open Finance as a key avenue for better financial inclusion.

Propelled by Covid-19 quarantines and lockdowns, the Internet economy in the Philippines grew the fastest in Southeast Asia while its gig economy was affirmed the fastest growing globally.

Our CPO, Jan Pabellon, gives a brief overview of what APIs are in this excerpt from our "Getting Started with Smile" Webinar held last November 18, 2021.

Our CEO, Jerome Eger explains what Smile API is, what problems Smile helps solve for our clients, and how we are different from other solutions out there for KYC, Verification or traditional Credit Scoring.

CreditEase, a China-based diversified conglomerate with a global footprint; and Plug and Play APAC, a tech-focused venture capital firm, made significant investments in Smile API, a newly-launched information infrastructure startup company in the Philippines opening up new opportunities for financial inclusion among the underbanked and unbanked by means of leveraging on employment data especially among freelancers and gig workers.

Connecting businesses, workers and banks for wider financial inclusion

The adoption of APIs has not only improved efficiency and reduced cost, but has also created new innovative business models and user experiences—especially in the world of banking and finance. But more importantly, it also promises to help millions of people have happier, healthier, more empowered and fulfilled lives.

For many people, not having a bank account is normal, but not having a job is less of an option. Newly created jobs during the pandemic have the property to be mostly digitally documented, enabled, and even executed, which makes them a perfect match for Smile and our clients.