Behind the Idea: Wevat

Behind the Idea: Wevat

Covid-19 has accelerated the rise of contactless payments with 69% of retailers seeing an increase in non-cash transactions during the pandemic. As consumers become more comfortable with making financial transactions on mobile apps, other traditionally paper-based systems, such as tourism tax reclaim, are likely to become more digitised in the future. Raphael Chow is CEO and founder of Wevat, a B2C money-saving tax reclaim app. He has spent his life in Hong Kong, Canada and the UK and also runs a startup community called ‘ Nest ’ to bring together the most talented Chinese founders in Europe. In 2021, Chow was named on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Prior to launching Wevat, Chow worked as a strategy consultant for Deloitte . What has been the traditional company response to financial technology innovations nationally? Traditionally, the VAT refund process for travellers has been overly complex, slow and inefficient. Claims had to be made on paper forms only available from retailers who were working with refund companies and taking their cut. This led to lengthy airport queues at VAT refund desks and consumers also saw high admin fees due to commissions being passed down to them. I decided to do something