Grab Financial Group announces financial services for SMEs in Southeast Asia

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Southeast Asian fintech player Grab Financial Group, has launched its SME lending and micro-insurance for drivers in Singapore. The ‘Grow with Grab’ roadmap aims to provide a comprehensive portfolio of financial services in Southeast Asia for micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses. The services include micro-insurance products, post-paid and instalment payment services as well as ‘Pay with GrabPay’ an online check-out payment method for online sellers.

‘Grow with Grab’ marks the Grab Financial Group’s full-scale push into lending and insurance. “We are doubling down on our financial services offering for micro-entrepreneurs with ‘Grow with Grab.’This is a huge untapped opportunity for Grab Financial to support the region’s entrepreneurs who are less able to access traditional financial institutions. While SMEs contribute more than 50% of ASEAN’s GDP, two thirds of SMEs cite business funding and financing as their biggest problem. The Grab app has served more than 9 million micro-entrepreneurs over the last 6 years. As a result, we can leverage our scale and data insights to bring financial services products to market at a more competitive price point,” said Reuben Lai, Senior Managing Director, Grab Financial Group.

In the next few weeks, Grab Financial will be launching new services from the ‘Grow with Grab’ roadmap that enable micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses to grow their earnings, grow their business and protect their livelihoods. 

With access to the Grab SuperApp, Grab Financial Group now provides a plethora of earning opportunities for micro-entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia. From driving with Grab, and delivering food or express packages and offering loyalty programmes with GrabRewards, to accepting payments via the GrabPay mobile wallet. 

As the first fintech platform with access to e-money licenses in the major six economies in ASEAN, Grab Financial has built a large merchant network, covering more than 600,000 merchants. Today, it launches new payments technologies that will allow more micro- and small businesses to benefit from the Grab user base: ‘Pay with GrabPay’ online check-out and Point-of-Sale (POS) device integration. The technologies help Grab Financial Group further differentiate itself in speed, affordability and versatility, all crucial needs for small entrepreneurs. 

‘Pay with GrabPay’ online check-out allows online sellers to accept GrabPay as a mobile wallet on their website or platform. Customers can buy their goods online from the same familiar, convenient and secure GrabPay wallet they use on a daily basis for Grab rides and food orders. The ‘Pay with GrabPay’ online check-out launches today with micro- and small businesses on local e-commerce platforms such as Qoo10, and 11Street, two of the largest e-commerce platforms in Singapore and Malaysia respectively. ‘Pay with GrabPay’ agreements have also been signed with some of the region’s biggest merchant gateways, including Adyen, Boku, iPay88, Dragonpay as well as key brands including Cathay Cineplexes in Singapore and SM Cinema in the Philippines. 

With POS device integration, business owners with POS devices can tap into Grab’s ASEAN-wide user base, without having to change their hardware or sales and accounting systems. Merchants can simply add GrabPay as a payment method on their existing POS device. The payment method will first launch in Singapore with merchants such as coffee chain Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and bakery chain Paris Baguette, following which it will expand this across the region.

Since announcing the Joint-Venture with Credit Saison last March, Grab has pushed into the lending space across Southeast Asia. In the last 12 months, the Joint-Venture has partnered with financial institutions to provide successful lending pilots to Grab driver-partners. The fintech platform has also started providing working capital loans to help small businesses grow in Singapore. 

The Joint-Venture today launches its first full-scale product: ‘Pay Later’, a post-paid and instalment payment service respectively. ‘Pay Later’, the post-paid payment service will launch first in Singapore in the next weeks, following which it will be expanding to other countries. 

‘Pay Later’ offers a post-paid payment facility which allows customers to pay for Grab services at the end of the month, without additional costs. This helps consumers who face exceptional expenses, but are keen to avoid being hit with higher credit card or personal loan interest payments.  In the following months, Grab will also launch a ‘Pay Later’ instalment payment product which allows consumers to buy goods right away and spread instalment payments at a 0% interest rate over multiple months.

Both products will be offered only to Grab’s most creditworthy customers. Grab Financial Group determines credit risk based on a stringent set of criteria, which includes tenure on the Grab platform, frequency of use and spending patterns.