Since its launch over a year ago, free online shop builder Sentro has powered over 30,000 merchants across the Philippines. Developed by UBX Philippines, Sentro is an all-in-one e-commerce platform for Filipino business owners to jump-start, run, and grow their enterprises.

As the COVID-19 pandemic drastically changed consumer behaviors, Sentro ensures business continuity for small and medium enterprises (SME) with its digital end-to-end features, and ability to run their business on a single platform.

“It was getting too tiring to capture, track, and update orders from our customers, and accepting payments from multiple platforms is a headache. But with Sentro, managing our business online is a breeze,” said Michael Lu, owner of Agrico Sentro shop.

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Digitization

With Sentro, business owners can create and publish their own online store in a few clicks. It’s simple, free, and easy, ensuring easy accessibility for business owners who are unfamiliar with digital and digitizing their brick-and-mortar businesses.

“We want Sentro to be accessible to everyone starting an online business, which is why we made sure that using our platform would require little to no knowledge in tech, making it easy for even the non-techiest of individuals,” said Bjorn Pardo, head of SME Ventures, UBX, and product lead Sentro. “In a matter of months, our team was able to launch Sentro to the public during the first few weeks of the pandemic. The launch could not have been timelier as it was made available to MSMEs when they needed it most.”

Sentro said entrepreneurs who are trying to explore the digital space in order to keep their businesses afloat in this pandemic and beyond, have three major pain points: fulfilling and accepting payments, logistics, and keeping track of orders.

“We focused on making Sentro the go-to operating system for online sellers by addressing these pain points,” Bjorn said. “Sentro provides our MSMEs with an online shop builder which they can use to create their own e-commerce website where they can showcase their business and sell their products and services. It provides a built-in payment gateway (Bux) so that they don’t have to worry about accepting payments from customers using different payment methods, and a built-in logistics service provider (MrSpeedy) so that they can book deliveries for their customers without having to open up a separate app or website.”

Sentro introduced a feature in March that allows Facebook Business Shop owners to link their stores to Sentro. This enables them to convert their stores from a marketing outlet to a full-fledged e-commerce store. Sentro can be linked to a Facebook Shop in minutes, and business owners can automatically accept payments, handle orders, and book deliveries from their supercharged Facebook Shop.