Grab Financial expands offerings to SMBs in ecommerce push

Grab Financial Group (GFG), the fintech arm of Singapore-based unicorn Grab, is expanding its suite of products to empower small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across Southeast Asia.

Under the Grow with Grab initiative, GFG rolled out GrabMerchant Commerce, a webstore builder platform. Since the pilot launch in May, over 500 merchants have signed up, with businesses in industries such as apparel, furniture, food and beverage, and artisanal products.

The company said that these merchants have averaged a 6x increase in sales from when they were onboarded on the platform, with 83% of them activating e-wallet GrabPay.

GrabMerchant Commerce will be rolled out to Malaysia and the Philippines in 2022.

GFG has also partnered with leading regional payment gateways such as 2C2P, AsiaPay, and Razer Merchant Services to accelerate the usage of GrabPay by SMBs. These partnerships will also enable PayLater – Grab’s buy now, pay later product – in these payment gateways for their respective Southeast Asian merchant bases.

“With PayLater, consumers can pay next month and earn GrabRewards, or pay in four interest-free instalments. Merchants find PayLater compelling given the scale of Grab’s ecosystem with over 25 million monthly transacting users, and many of our PayLater merchants have reported increased basket sizes and check-out rates,” said Chris Yeo, managing director and head of GrabPay.

These initiatives will help the superapp tap the regional ecommerce market opportunity, which is expected to be valued at US$172 billion by 2025.

See also: Why does the GrabPay-Stripe partnership matter?

In June, Grab also launched the Shopping icon on its app to facilitate merchant discovery by users across Southeast Asia. To purchase products, users are directed to the merchant’s website to complete the transaction.

According to Grab, one in five users tapped on the icon to explore merchants across categories such as fashion, beauty, electronics, and home and living. These users also accessed merchant offers available on the app.

“Our approach is to be an open ecosystem,” said Reuben Lai, senior managing director of GFG.