Ascend Money: Leveraging Google Cloud and Google Workspace for Cost Reduction and Improved Collaboration

Ascend Money is one of the largest fintech businesses in South East Asia, providing financial services to people in the region, particularly those who lack access to banking. The company's offerings include the TrueMoney regional payment platform for underserved and digital consumers, supporting more than 40 million consumers across six countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. TrueMoney also provides an e-wallet app that offers easy ways to top up mobile phones, shop online, and pay for products and services. Ascend Money also offers financial products to small to medium businesses. The company is part of the South East Asian online business Ascend Group, which also operates e-commerce, e-procurement, data centers, cloud services, fulfillment, and digital marketing services.

Ascend Money, one of South East Asia's largest fintech businesses, was facing challenges as it expanded its customer base and ventured into new markets. The company initially operated using physical infrastructure and on-premises workforce productivity applications. However, as the business grew, its technology leaders began to explore options to improve value for money, reduce the maintenance load on in-house team members, enhance data management and analysis, and foster more effective collaboration. The company was also looking for ways to reduce its infrastructure spending and become more efficient and cost-effective. Ascend Money needed a solution that would allow it to optimize its operations, lower costs, and improve performance.

Ascend Money evaluated various solutions available in the market and decided to move to Google Workspace and Google Cloud. The company saw Google Kubernetes Engine as a seamless way of transitioning from an on-premises data center to a cloud service. Ascend Money also reviewed data infrastructure solutions and opted for a cloud service after a rigorous evaluation of Google Cloud against the services offered by another cloud provider. The company found that based on value, ease of use, effectiveness, and the skills and adaptability of its team members, BigQuery and other Google Cloud services were the best fit for its business. Ascend Money is now using a range of Google Cloud services for the infrastructure outside its data platform, including Stackdriver logging and monitoring; Cloud KMS to manage cryptographic keys for its cloud services, Cloud Build to undertake continuous integration, delivery, and deployment; Cloud DNS to provide domain name system services; and Cloud Functions to enable its developers to run and scale code in the cloud.

• With Google Cloud and Google Workspace, Ascend Money has been able to scale and deliver to market faster. The company has managed to reduce its software deployment, licensing, and repair costs significantly. The shorter time to onboard team members to Google Workspace has resulted in improved productivity and an accelerated ability to collaborate. The company's team members primarily use Sheets, Slides, and Docs to create internal materials, and Google Meet to collaborate when working from different locations. The deployment of Google Workspace has also reduced the number of meetings, enabling the team to work effectively in a distributed fashion. The company is now ideally positioned to support growing demand for its fintech services in South East Asia, particularly among people with limited access to banking.

• Saved 3,000,000 THB (about US$90,000) in licensing costs

• Reduced the time to complete infrastructure activities by 50% through automation tools

• Saved about 20 hours per week for each worker across the business