MatchMove has brought in a digital-banking partner tied to Thai food conglomerate CP Group, along with others, in hopes of disrupting the remittance business in this region. The bidding for a digital full bank license in Singapore serves as a natural extension of its business, said the fintech.
The MatchMove-led application brings together consortium members comprising finance company Singapura Finance, CP Group-linked Lightnet, and U.K. fintech OpenPayd Holdings with capabilities and experience across the spectrum of digital financial services, the consortium said in a statement on Thursday.
«Our proposed digital Banking-as-a-Service will accelerate this objective by leveraging our existing and already available capabilities to address current pent up demand and reach digitally underserved segments like SMEs and gig workers, amongst others. As a pure-play fintech, we believe we are well-positioned to graduate to becoming the Digital Bank of choice for enterprises, employees and consumers of the future, in Singapore and the region,” said MatchMove's founder and group CEO Shailesh Naik in a statement on Thursday.
Complete Missing Pieces
MatchMove already provides a Wallet-as-a-Service platform, through which it manages the end-to-end process for millions of customer transactions across multiple countries in Asia. Providing full digital banking is a natural evolution of MatchMove’s current capabilities towards a holistic and integrated banking proposition, Naik added.
By bringing together various players in the region, MatchMove believes their application for a digital full bank license will allow it to complete the missing pieces of its existing payments business, which includes remittance, as these partners bring along regional and global connectivity to enhance the proposed banking value proposition.
Assembled An Ecosystem
As a key element of the proposed Digital Bank’s go-to-market strategy, MatchMove has assembled an ecosystem of fintech and businesses with ready access to large networks of retail customers and SMEs. The proposed digital bank will provide tailored and relevant banking products and services to these organizations and their employees, to SME clients and to the partners’ own retail customers.
«These confirmed ecosystem partners include a leading transport operator in Singapore, SE Asia’s leading insurance company, a regional payments acquirer, two leading tech startups focused on SME services, and Asia’s leading B2B enabler of online stores, amongst others. Advanced discussions are underway with several other potential partners. MatchMove is differentiated by this ability to continue to expand its go-to-market partner base and thus reach more underserved segments quickly.»
Banking-As-A-Service Platform
For Singapura Finance, participating in the digital full bank application comes on the back of their close strategic relationship with MatchMove. Singapura Finance is leveraging the MatchMove Banking-as-a-Service platform to power its Vivid Card solution and is also a strategic investor in MatchMove.
«This strategy complements our existing business and steps up our digitization efforts as well as enables us to diversify into new digital native segments and products,» said Jamie Teo, CEO of Singapura Finance.
