High hopes for Alibaba-backed fintech
Payments firm Ascend Money is looking to tap the unbanked market and create a credit-rating scheme in South-east Asia.
Add BT as a preferred source
DeeperDive is a beta AI feature. Refer to full articles for the facts.
A SOUTH-EAST Asian financial technology (fintech) firm backed by Chinese giant Alibaba and Thai conglomerate CP Group is looking to tap the significantly unbanked market in the region. In doing so, Ascend Money also hopes to, in time, create a credit-rating scheme that takes in scoring based on customers' social behaviour.
Ascend Money aims to serve 100 million underserved consumers by 2020 - five times its customer base. This speaks to the large number of people in Asean who have no banking relationship, or have no means to get loans, said its chief executive Punnamas Vichitkulwongsa.
"We call it the vicious cycle of the poor, or the underserved."
Copyright SPH Media. All rights reserved.
TRENDING NOW
StarHub hands Ensign InfoSecurity control back to Temasek in S$115 million deal, books S$200 million gain
Singaporeans can now buy record amount of yen per Singdollar
Air India asks Tata, Singapore Airlines for funds after US$2.4 billion loss
Keppel DC Reit posts 13.2% higher Q1 DPU of S$0.02833 on strong portfolio performance
