Exclusive ｜ Shopee Digital Bank Maribank Beginning

On July 18th, Shopee announced in the internal letter that its digital bank -Maribank officially entered the internal test period, mainly for the internal employees of Shopee. From the information disclosed by internal letter, the entire internal testing period will start from August, and the internal test is expected to be completed within 1 to 2 months.

Maribank Singapore's pre -registered registration form is described as "Almost Done" to describe Shopee's progress in digital banks. Maribank should have completed a basic digital bank function construction. Zero -state LT (ID: lingtai_lt) predicts that Maribank will be opened to the public at the end of this year or early next year, becoming an important organization of Southeast Asian Banks.

It is worth mentioning that from the recruitment website, Maribank recruited many traditional bank practitioners. According to the public data of LinkedIn, the Maribank team comes from the most well -known traditional banking teams in Southeast Asia such as DBS, CITI, UOB, Maybank, and most of them come from high -level management. The establishment of such a team is valuable for Shopee, which is in a crisis of revenue.

This also shows an attitude. Maribank not only wants to compete with Ant Financial in the field of digital banking, but also hopes to achieve the purpose of confrontation with traditional banks.

Digital banks in Southeast Asia are a fertile and unsolved treasure. Not only is the digital payment relatively lagging, but the markets in many countries in Southeast Asia are even low. Public data shows that the credit card coverage rate of many countries in Southeast Asia is less than 10%, and nearly 200 million among 400 million adults do not have a bank account.

This situation is caused by the complex currency form of Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia does not have universal currencies, causing different currencies to depend on different accounts. This is why Southeast Asia still uses cash as the mainstream payment method.

Digital banks may solve such problems.

Under the digital banking framework, business processing can be solved in the field of digitalization. From the perspective of bank establishment and management, whether it is the Staryi Digital Bank that the Ant Group has been listed, or Maribank in the internal test of Shopee, it can solve the problem of multi -currency from the perspective of architecture. Compared with digital banks, it is difficult for traditional banks to find a breakthrough out of this dilemma.

On the other hand, the epidemic has also transformed the concept of payment methods for Southeast Asian residents. The proportion of cash and physical transactions is declining. A data from VISA shows that more and more consumers are willing to accept mobile payment methods and have more open attitude towards digital banks. 57% of people think that shopping online is more convenient, and even 77% said that after the epidemic is eased, they are more willing to use digital payment instead of cash.

From the perspective of industry change, Shopee and Ant Group are more like a camp player. Under the wave of lifestyle changes in Southeast Asia, the market of digital banks is wider than the earliest expectations.

In addition, more digital industries have been relocated to Singapore since this year, and Southeast Asia has gradually become a science and technology hub in the Asia -Pacific region. For digital bank operators, this is undoubtedly a good thing, because it has created more payment scenarios, especially digital payment scenarios.

More and more funds flow into Southeast Asia, and the role of digital banks is showing. Maribank's slow debut is not only an incentive for the digital banking industry in Southeast Asia, but also sounding the alarm for the traditional banking industry.

Author ｜ Zero -state LT

Produced ｜ Zero -state LT (ID: lingtai_lt)

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