A recent tie-up with Maybank boosts ride-hailing giant Grab's ambitious plans to expand its mobile wallet across unbanked regions in Southeast Asia.
Maybank has recently partnered with ride-hailing giant Grab to boost usage of Grab’s mobile wallet in Malaysia, as finews.asia earlier reported.
For the Malaysian bank with the largest assets locally, the partnership means access to a fast-growing mobile banking user base in the region that may be currently unbanked. Almost 440 million people in Southeast Asia are «unbanked», according to a KPMG report in 2016.
Exclusive Benefits
Maybank’s customers will soon be able to use the online platform Maybank2U to top up their GrabPay mobile wallet and to purchase goods and services provided by the bank’s key merchants. Mayband will reward customers who pay for rides and services using Grab Pay with exclusive benefits.
The tie-up provides a huge boost to Grab’s ambitious plans to expand its mobile wallet across eight countries in Southeast Asia, after launching Grab wallet in Singapore last year. The company will roll out other lifestyle features such as food delivery and online shopping.
Shift Towards E-payments
Malaysia’s central bank, or Bank Negara, has been actively promoting for more Malaysians to go cashless. Cash handling and related services cost about 1.8 billion Malaysian Ringgit annually, according to Bank Negara. A shift towards e-payments could potentially generate savings of as much as 1 percent of the country’s economy.
Bank Negara will work towards accelerating the migration to electronic payments. In the next ten years, the central bank aims to increase the number of e-payment transactions per capita from 44 transactions to 200 transactions, and reduce cheques by more than half from 207 million to 100 million per year, according to a recent statement.
