The bank has entered a 10-year multi-product strategic partnership with «Buy Now Pay Later» (BNPL) brand Atome to deliver a wide range of financial services to consumers and merchants across key markets in Asia. 

The partnership, which aims to deliver mobile-first financial services for consumers across Asia, includes a planned $500 million financing to support Atome Financial to expand its regional ecosystem of merchants and customers.

The partnership will initially include BNPL services, targeting to roll out in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam in the next few months, and later expand to include digital lending products, according to an announcement on Wednesday. 

Judy Hsu, CEO, Standard Chartered consumer, private and business banking, said the partnership gives the bank an «opportunity to be part of the rapidly growing digital consumer finance ecosystem and provides convenient and relevant digital financial products to complement and enrich clients’ digital lives.»

Regional Powerhouse

Headquartered in Singapore, Atome has presence across Southeast Asia, India and Greater China. The platform was launched in 2019, and currently partners over 5,000 online and offline retailers in nine markets. It also operates digital lending platform Kredit Pintar in Indonesia.

Atome Financial recently closed a $400 million+ Series D financing round from an investor consortium led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Warburg Pincus, valuing the company at more than $2 billion.

The company just inked a partnership with 2C2P to allow the global payments platform's network of online and offline merchants in the region to offer BNPL as an alternative payment method to their customers.

Growing Market

BNPL payment methods have seen surge in popularity, particularly among millennials and Gen Z consumers. Merchants are also tapping on its growth to increase customer conversion, average order size and repeat sales.

Standard Chartered said the digital lending market is valued at $92 billion by 2025 in Southeast Asia alone, citing data by Bain, Temasek and Google.

Last month, U.S. fintech giant PayPal announced a mostly cash deal to acquire Japan BNPL platform Paidy for ¥300 billion (about $2.7 billion). Square, run by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey bought Australian BNPL platform Afterpay for $29 billion in August. Temasek also Pine Labs