Pomelo Pay CEO Vincent Choi: Forward-Thinking Payment Solutions For Businesses

Pomelo Pay helps lighten the load for growing businesses by providing a selection of low-cost and user-friendly tools, making taking payments easy and immediate. Anywhere our merchants do business, we can help. Whether that’s using phones to take payments, creating online shops or menus or simply sending payment links for jobs done.

We were founded by a team of financial services and tech specialists and are proud to partner with businesses, big and small, across the UK and Asia. Our contact-less technology is constantly evolving, but our mission is absolute: we want to see more businesses prosper.

That’s why we named ourselves after the pomelo fruit, a symbol of good luck and success often presented as a gift. Our gift to the businesses we work with is the one thing money can’t buy: time. We remove admin headaches to allow business leaders to focus on what they do best. Without a care or a card machine!

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 Supporting the underdog has always been really important to me. I wanted to make it easier for small and medium sized businesses to succeed.

We initially set up Pomelo Pay to help businesses accept payments from Chinese visitors, who are far more accustomed to using QR technology than we are in the Western world. Our vision is now more expansive but the initial objective – to help businesses grow – remains unchanged. The extra bit of revenue they can take from having a better way of taking payments can make the difference between surviving and thriving.

The days of having a close relationship with bank managers has passed but we’re hoping to bring back that level of support to the businesses we work with, all the while making the process of setting up and running business less hard work and more enjoyable.

What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs?

 It has been an extremely tough year for businesses across a huge range of sectors. When you run a business it’s so easy to become fixed in the way you approach things but I’ve been hugely impressed by the businesses we work with who have been so quick embrace new ways of working to Covid-proof their operations, whether that’s switching from cash to digital payments or creating online shops or menus to sell their products or services.

While we might be in the midst of a second national lockdown I’d advise all entrepreneurs to use this opportunity to consider the changes they can make to their business, not just to survive the current disruption, but to properly thrive during the eventual economic recovery. That’s something we are helping our merchants with right now.

I also think it’s important to surround yourself with people who are really invested in the project. I’m very lucky to have a team that really believe in our guiding mission of helping more businesses prosper. We’re a relatively small but growing team who bring a diversity of skillsets and backgrounds to the table – which gives me a hugely expanded pool of ideas and suggestions to draw from as we continually look for ways to improve the services and support we offer.

What can we hope to see from Pomelo Pay in the future?

Our enduring vision is to help businesses owners do what they do best, which is focus on growing their business without having to worry about financial admin. Every step we take in the future will therefore be geared towards this idea.

Right now, our focus is expanding our offering and continuing to help businesses, big and small, navigate the current challenging economic climate by going digital and adapting new payment technology. This includes pioneering an exciting new product that will make payments truly contactless, without the need for a card machine.

At the same time, we plan to our build on our international reach with growth in different markets including the UK and several countries across Europe and ASEAN.