Mae-Manee with Connect Hub: Payment Notifications for Merchants

Mae-Manee is a merchant application from Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) designed to help merchants receive payments and manage digital sales. According to SCB, merchants can generate a QR code for customers to make payments, and when a payment is completed, the Mae-Manee application can notify both the shop owner and relevant staff. Merchants can also review previous payment records through the sales summary or sales transaction section of the application. SCB also presents Mae-Manee as more than a basic QR payment application. The bank's current information describes QR payment acceptance as well as capabilities related to credit-card payments and selected online-selling tools, subject to the bank's services and applicable conditions. For Connect Hub, Mae-Manee is one of the merchant banking applications that merchants frequently ask us about and is one of the applications supported by our In-App system. We have moderately tested Mae-Manee with Connect Hub, with particular attention to how its notifications behave during continuous day-to-day shop operation. Connect Hub does not receive, process, or act as an intermediary for customer funds. Financial transactions remain under the bank's payment process. Connect Hub Merchant Manager works with notification information from supported merchant applications to assist payment awareness and merchant operations. From Connect Hub testing, we have observed behavior that may be useful for merchants operating multiple payment points. We have observed the ability to add up to 10 sub-accounts through registered mobile phone numbers. When a payment is received through the main-account QR, we have observed notifications reaching the main account and all associated sub-accounts. These are Connect Hub operational observations and are not presented as specifications published on the SCB public page referenced for this article. For day-to-day use, we have found that Mae-Manee can operate well in the background and does not require PIN entry every time it is used. However, its signed-in session is time-based. After the application has remained in the background for some time, bringing it back to the foreground may require the app to reconnect and establish a new session, and in some cases the merchant may then be asked to enter the PIN again. A practical workflow we have found useful for merchants using Mae-Manee with Connect Hub In-App is to sign in successfully and then leave Mae-Manee operating in the background during the day. When merchants want to review information relevant to Connect Hub operations, they can use Connect Hub Merchant Manager instead of repeatedly bringing the banking application to the foreground. Audible notification behavior is another important operational consideration. In Connect Hub testing, we have not observed Mae-Manee announcing payment sounds while the application is operating in the background. The application's own audible alert is observed when Mae-Manee is in the foreground as the notification arrives. When used with Connect Hub Merchant Manager, however, Connect Hub can work with supported Mae-Manee notification information so that a connected QR Box can provide an audible payment alert. These behaviors are based on Connect Hub testing and may change as SCB updates the application or related services.