As August rolls around, we’re not just celebrating the birthday of our nation, but of YouTrip as well. Regional General Manager, Kelvin Lam, shares his thoughts on the challenges faced during the pandemic as well as the initiatives taken to manoeuvre through this past year — inspired by you!
Dear YouTroopers,
August is a special month for us at YouTrip. We not only celebrate the birthday of this sunny island that we’ve called home the past three years, but 7 August 2018 was also the day we introduced YouTrip to the world.
From the beginning, our mission has been simple: to develop a convenient and affordable multi-currency payment experience for everyone. Since then, we’ve accompanied you through countless overseas trips, taken care of your payments when studying abroad, and helped make the most out of your online shopping.
And even when the world was thrown into turmoil during the pandemic, our mission did not change — instead, it became more relevant than ever.
Just like everyone else, we felt the effects as a company — but we saw these challenges as opportunities. Our YouTroopers always form the core in everything that we do, and in these unprecedented times, your needs continue to be our north star for the road ahead. Keeping you in mind, we adapted, innovated on our offerings and bounced back stronger than before.
Over time, your unwavering support pushed us to hit a significant milestone of achieving more than 1 million downloads to date! It means the world to know that there is still a need for our solutions. For that, we express our utmost gratitude. On this 3rd anniversary, I’d like to invite you to take a walk down memory lane with me, as we look back on this special year and share some plans ahead.
Initiatives Inspired By You
One question that we constantly ask ourselves as a team is – “How can we offer value to our YouTroopers?”
In this time of disrupted travel, we’ve seen many of you move your offline payments abroad to online overseas shopping. And we know our YouTroopers are savvy shoppers who are always on the lookout for the best and smartest ways to pay. That’s why we launched our #YouTripItOnline campaign, using the same proposition of best exchange rates to share how you can save more when shopping on overseas online stores.
From Taobao, to iHerb, Aliexpress and Zalora, we continue to partner your favourite merchants to seal the best deals for you.
Beyond spending, we’ve also worked on developing exciting features for a simpler and safer payment experience. Earlier this year, we launched YouTrip Send as a convenient way for YouTroopers to transfer money to friends and family in any of the 10 in-app currencies. To help you keep track of your expenditure, we also incorporated a search function in-app and Transaction Statements for each of your currency wallets – this has been a huge help for me to stay on top of my spending! And as you ramped up on your online shopping, we took measures to ensure your safety by employing robust verification technology to keep online fraud at bay.
Away But Not Apart
Creating hyper-localised experiences for our YouTroopers has always been vital in keeping connected with you, and that didn’t stop even as we stayed home.
We loved the enthusiastic response to the upsized festive campaigns rolled out during Chinese New Year and Hari Raya this year (don’t worry there’s more to come!). And you joined us in supporting the outstanding talent in our local creative scene through #CraftwithLove during these tough times.
Even though we aren’t able to meet physically, I’m glad we still found creative ways to bring YouTroopers together through online events such as Trivia Night and a magnificent virtual tour of Berlin, Amsterdam and Pompeii led by our friends at Withlocals to stave off that cabin fever.
Inaugural Trivia Night with YouTroopers
Virtual tour led by Withlocals
Where We’re Heading In The Future
What started off as a small group of 20 has now grown into a three-country strong team across Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand. We’re always thinking of ways to bring our ‘truly no fees’ proposition to more people in Southeast Asia, and continuing to build strong partnerships with many of our existing and new partners earlier this year is an encouraging step towards this direction.
YouTrip Singapore team
As we enter YouTrip’s fourth year, our next frontier is to double down on our innovations and enhance our payments offerings to our YouTroopers. These developments are right on track as we speak, and we can’t wait to share that with you in the coming months.
Once again, I’d like to say a huge thank you to all our YouTroopers who’ve been with us in this shared journey, and we look forward to more years ahead together.
Take care, stay safe and I anticipate the day we can celebrate in person again.
Best regards,
Kelvin Lam
Regional General Manager, YouTrip
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