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Tag: digibank

  • Revolut Ramps Up Growth Efforts in Singapore

    Revolut Ramps Up Growth Efforts in Singapore

    The fintech hopes to build on the momentum it has gained amid the social and economic challenges brought about by the pandemic.

    Revolut Singapore has made a number of additions to its growing team in Singapore bring onboard digital strategist Sam Chui as marketing manager and media specialist Deborah Tan-Pink as communications manager.

    Chui joins from local marketing agency GoodStuph, while Tan-Pink resigns from her role as CEO of an edtech startup to join the company. She previously spent more than 10 years in lifestyle publishing, including a stint as editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Singapore. The pair will report to Pam Chuang, Revolut Singapore’s head of growth.

    Our hiring strategy is to attract top talents in the region with great expertise in specific fields. Both Deborah and Sam have on-ground knowledge of the Singapore market when it comes to our target customers, Chuang said about the new hires.

    The total number of e-commerce transactions among Revolut customers more than doubled during Singapore’s «circuit breaker» period earlier this year. Contactless payments also grew by 30 percent, and now comprises 90 percent of its transactions, Tan-Pink said.

    Revolut is currently seeing a recovery in in-store spending, particularly for restaurant dining, with close to 3x growth in total transactions. Year to date, our daily active people figure is close to pre-Covid levels and we are poised to grow this number further this quarter and into 2021, she said.

    The company said it has enjoyed «very positive momentum» since its launch one year ago, with over 70,000 customers, of which 65 percent are Singaporeans. The average age of the Revolut customer in Singapore is 35 and some three-quarters of its active customers use the Revolut card for e-commerce purchases, it noted.

    The company is preparing to bring Revolut Junior to the market in the last quarter of 2020, and expects a full roll-out of Revolut Business at end of the first quarter next year.

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  • Gojek to Be Integrated Within DBS’ PayLah

    Gojek to Be Integrated Within DBS’ PayLah

    Users of DBS Bank’s PayLah! app over the next few months will find Gojek integrated within its app, both companies said on Thursday. In addition, Gojek customers can now pay with PayLah.

    As part of its partnership with the Indonesian ride-hailing firm, DBS Bank’s payment feature has been made available in the Gojek app for both iOS and Android users in Singapore, both companies announced on Thursday.

    Through integrating DBS PayLah! in the Gojek app, our riders will have greater flexibility to choose their preferred payment methods, which allows for a more seamless travel and payment experience with every ride, said the general manager of Gojek Singapore, Lien Choong Luen, in a media statement.

    Gojek customers will be able to add DBS PayLah! as a preferred payment method for their rides after a one-time authorization and set-up. According to Gojek, about 35 percent of its daily ride-hailing transactions are paid for in cash.

    This presents an opportunity for DBS and Gojek to encourage users to adopt digital payments, the companies noted.

    As Indonesia is a key growth market for DBS, DBS and Gojek are now exploring collaboration opportunities in Indonesia, including cross-marketing initiatives. Ride-hailing company Gojek is headquartered in Indonesia, where DBS has more than 460,000 digibank customers.

    Following the success of DBS and Gojek’s partnership in Singapore, where Gojek recently celebrated their 10 million-trip milestone, we have also entered the next phase of our partnership in Indonesia, said Shee Tse Koon, DBS country head for Singapore.

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  • Legacy Banks Must Become Agile, Says Citi

    Legacy Banks Must Become Agile, Says Citi

    New entrants and increased competition brought about by challenger banks could result in revenue losses of up to 30 percent among legacy banks over the next 10 years. While digitalization can lower costs for incumbent banks by 30 to 50 percent, new competition and greater transparency in the banking market, prompted by the emergence of challenger banks driven by fintech startups, are likely to lower revenues by 10 to 30 percent in the next decade, according to the report “Bank X: The New New Banks” published by Citi on Thursday.

    As legacy banks recognize the threat that new entrants into banking are posing to revenue and customers, they need to reinvent themselves and reimagine banking. This involves legacy banks partnering with technology companies to create effective joint ventures as well as moving into more disruptive technology and business models to transform themselves into digital competitors, the report said.

    If banks successfully transform digitally, their ROEs will rise from 8 percent in Europe and 16 percent in the U.S. to 15 percent and 24 percent respectively in a bullish scenario, and 5 percent and 10 percent respectively in a bearish scenario, the report noted.

    Bank X

    Built by new entrants, challenger banks designed around new digital technologies, leveraging data insights via agile technology stacks to offer customers better personalization and fully digital banking experiences. As they offer their services remotely via online or mobile banking, challenger banks tend to be quicker at incorporating new products or processes into their platforms and help easily connect with third-party products, ultimately offering more choices to the end-user.

    By creating their own Bank X, we believe legacy banks can transform themselves from slow-moving caterpillars to agile butterflies, Ronit Ghose, Citi Global Head of Bank Research, said.

    The report noted that while creating a new digital-only bank can help incumbent banks meet an evolving set of customer expectations quickly and effectively, setting up an independent challenger bank needs to be differentiated from digital transformations and core banking overhauls that they undertake. This is because creating their own Bank X requires independent application programming interfaces (APIs) and technology stacks, which is a significant departure from the operating model of incumbent banks.

    Need for Regulation in Asia

    Apart from the lower number of challenger banks in Asia compared to the U.K. and U.S., Citi noted that challenger banks in Asia are largely offshoots of big tech, telcoms, and banks. For example, WeBank, MYbank, and Kakao Bank are all backed by tech firms, KBank and Jibun Bank are backed by telcoms, while DBS has made progress in Indonesia and India with digibank, its own challenger bank.

    While Asia has several challenger banks originating from startups aiming to disrupt the financial system, Neat in Hong Kong or Paytm in India, they are exceptions. This is a result of the limited regulatory framework for challengers in Asia, with the emerging exception of Hong Kong, and the presence of large tech companies, particularly in China.

    Conversely, challenger bank activity is vibrant in the U.K. and Europe as a result of progressive regulations enacted to promote competition and break up the banking monopoly, the report said.

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  • DBS to offer digibank service in Indonesia

    DBS to offer digibank service in Indonesia

    DBS Bank plans to launch a mobile-only banking service in Indonesia by the end of the year.

    DBS Group chief executive Piyush Gupta told the Sweden-Southeast Asia Business Summit on Wednesday that the bank is targeting Indonesia to capitalise on the young, tech-savvy consumers among its 260 million population.

    “Indonesia is an important market with its size and scale, and the economic reforms taking place in the country,” he said. “There is great potential for business as we see a pickup in the country’s economy under the leadership of President Joko Widodo.”

    DBS’s digibank offering, which includes an e-wallet and a savings account, will be available to customers in addition to its consumer and corporate banking services at its 34 branches in 13 Indonesian cities. DBS opened its first branch in Indonesia – an outlet in Jakarta – in 1989.

    DBS hopes to replicate the success it is seeing in India since it started its digibank service there in April – the first mobile-only banking facility in the sub-continent, said a DBS spokesman.

    The service has attracted more than 250,000 new clients in the first four months of its operation.

    A digibank account can be opened in India with just a 12-digit Aadhaar number, which provides a unique biometric identification for all resident Indian citizens.

    More than a billion Indians have been issued with Aadhaar cards by the government. With over 200 million smartphone users in the country, the market for digibank is huge.

    The service’s e-wallet can be used for making payments, including telephone and electricity bills. Customers can also use a Visa virtual debit card to shop at over 100,000 online merchants.

    “While we continue to invest in growing our existing network in India, we also believe that with the digital revolution, the future of banking will be very different,” said the spokesman.

    “Increasingly, many customers want to be able to do their banking digitally and on the go. A successful digital banking strategy will meet changing customer needs, while enabling us to accelerate our reach in large geographies without the need for a large brick-and-mortar footprint.”

    Indonesian clients will be able to use their biometric national identity card to open digibank accounts.

    DBS said it intends to launch digibank in other markets after its introduction in Indonesia.