Lennon Tan, group chairman, JK Tech Group.
Lennon Tan, group chairman, JK Tech Group.
After working for American manufacturing conglomerate 3M – where he developed the business across the Asia Pacific – for 10 years, Lennon Tan decided to scratch his entrepreneurial itch and relocated to China to seek business opportunities.
There, he chanced upon and acquired Jing King Tech Holdings, then a small card-manufacturing business whose owner was about to retire. After taking over the company in 2001, Tan tapped on technology and innovation to transform the manufacturing outfit into the fintech giant it is today, and which ranks among the top 10 global smartcard producers.
With 2,000 employees worldwide, the JK Tech Group, which is now headquartered in Singapore, services leading banks and financial institutions with secure mobile payment solutions, biometric authentication technology, and automation solutions such as virtual teller machines (VTM).
VTMs, fitted with facial recognition technology and video surveillance, allow customers to access banking services without having to visit a bank’s branch. Says the 49-year-old Tan: “An ATM can do many things, but it cannot remit large amounts and open new accounts, so we designed the VTM, which is capable of these tasks through biometrics, and can help to reduce the number of staff in a 30,000 sq ft bank to just five.”
