Ascend Money links with Alibaba financial services unit
ASCEND MONEY, a Thai financial-technology firm, is joining with China’s Ant Financial to accelerate the growth of digital financial services in Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia.
“The agreement will allow Ant Financial to increase its stake in Ascend Money from 20 per cent to 30 per cent within two years, along with initiating more financial-technology services and solutions for use throughout Southeast Asia,” Punnamas Vichitkulwongsa, chief executive officer of Ascend Group, said yesterday.
The objective is to provide innovative financial services to more than 100 million customers in Southeast Asia by 2020.
“Our partnership with Ant Financial will help accelerate innovative financial services and platforms, enabling a strong financial-services ecosystem,” he said.
Ascend expects to double its investment in fintech next year to Bt2 billion, of which 40 per cent will be for Thailand and the rest outside the country.
Its active users in Thailand are expected to increase from 700,000 to 7 million within 12-18 months, while online transactions are expected to rise by 30 per cent to Bt70 billion this year.
Ascend Money is operating under the TrueMoney brand for payments and Ascend Nano for lending.
Headquartered in Bangkok, it operates in six countries – Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar and Cambodia.
Ascend Money targets two underserved groups – digital consumers with its innovative mobile wallet application and the under-banked with its massive agent network.
It provides payment services such as domestic and international remittance, bill payment, top-up services, online and offline payments and payroll services.
“Future services will include lending, insurance and investment,” Punnamas said.
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Together with Ant Financial, Ascend will grow its online and offline payment and financial-services ecosystem and strengthen its payment services for users and merchants.
The deal represents the first investment of Ant Financial, a unit of Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group, in a Thai company.
Eric Jing, CEO of Ant Financial, said its Alipay app, which has more than 450 million users, would provide Ascend Money with strategic and technical support for the growth of its business.
Besides its capabilities in payment, big data, risk control and cloud-computing capabilities, the partnership with Ascend Money will also build on synergies in digital financial services to offer Thai consumers comprehensive and equal access to financial services, he said.
Ascend Money is Ant Financial’s first partner in Southeast Asia and second globally after Paytm in India, as the company aims to “bring small and beautiful changes to the world”.
“We aim to provide services to over 2 billion users in 10 years. We are building an open ecosystem with our global partners,” Jing said.
“The payment market in SE Asia has vast untapped potential, and we are dedicated to contributing our share to bring a greater variety of convenient and reliable financial services to small and micro enterprises and individual consumers.
“It’s our life purpose to help the underserved, which include digital consumers and the under-banked.”
Supachai Chearavanont, chairman of Ascend Group, a unit of Charoen Pokphand Group chaired by Dhanin Chearavanont, said CP Group had invested in more than 20 countries worldwide through its four core businesses – food and agriculture, retail and distribution, telecommunications and fintech.
