Grab, Ovo make raft of wallet updates; business loans now offered through Grow With Grab

Reuben Lai, senior managing director, Grab Financial, on stage at Money 20/20 2019 in Singapore. / Photo credit: Grab

Grab will offer payments tech, microloans, and micro-insurance to small businesses as a single package called Grow With Grab.

Speaking at the Money 20/20 conference in Singapore today, Reuben Lai, senior managing director of the ride-hailing company’s Grab Financial unit, said that the suite will be customizable according to clients’ needs.

Grab Financial was launched at the same event last year, when the company unveiled partnerships with Japanese consumer finance provider Credit Saison and Swiss insurer Chubb.

Grab later began offering personal loans to micro-entrepreneurs on its platform, but Lai said that Grow With Grab marks the first time that the “super app” will be able to expand its lending capabilities to small and medium-sized businesses.

The suite will also include micro-insurance options to provide financial security for entrepreneurs and their employees, as well as comprehensive access to GrabPay’s technology to provide enhanced payments options for their customers.

Lai also revealed updates to the GrabPay digital wallet.

It will be integrated with point-of-sale systems to make it easier for merchants to accept GrabPay transfers, with Singaporean food and beverage chains Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Paris Baguette the first to trial the service.

It will also be made available as an online payments option, Pay With GrabPay, with several of Grab’s ecommerce partners.

Southeast Asian online marketplaces Qoo10 and 11Street are among the first to have added Pay With GrabPay to their sites, while merchant gateways including Adyen, Boku, iPay88, and Dragonpay, and leisure providers including Singapore’s Cathay Cineplexes and the Philippines’ SM Cinema, have also signed up.

Another new feature launched as part of Grab’s joint venture with Credit Saison, named Pay Later, will give customers a “virtual credit card,” enabling them to spread out payments over instalments at zero-percent interest.

The updates allow “consumers who never had access [to ecommerce] because they didn’t have a bank account or credit card to get online and transact using the same GrabPay wallet,” said Lai.

Grab’s archrival Go-Jek began trialing a virtual credit card service – named PayLater – in its Go-Pay wallet in September last year.

Following Lai on stage was Jason Thompson, former head of GrabPay and now CEO at Ovo, Grab’s Indonesian payments partner.