Guys - just a quick field report from here in Singapore…
This weekend whilst out at a local cafe, I noticed for the first time Shopee Pay (which is SEA’s payments business) there on the counter with a QR code as a payment option in physical retail. I’d only ever seen it on the Shopee website previously. When mentioning this to a friend over here, he happened to also share that his wife had seen Shopee Pay cropping up increasingly in store. I’m not sure if this is as a direct result of obtaining one of the Singapore digital banking licenses or whether this move predates that but clearly they are closing the loop in the financial space in Singapore with banking, settlements and payment processing. I expect them to be a serious “challenger” bank vs the well entrenched major local banks (OCBC, DBS and UOB) and foreign banks with a presence here (Standard Chartered, HSBC, ANZ, Citi and ICBC).
Shopee Pay is looking as though it is about to go through the same hyper growth as Shopee eCommerce has gone through over the last 5 years.
I might have shared these before but here are a few links to broker reports on SEA from here in Singapore…
https://www1.dbsvonline.com/DBSVReport/2020/12/2020120717305…
https://www1.dbsvonline.com/DBSVReport/2020/10/2020102911531…
Ant