Standard Chartered signs a partnership with Atome Financial for BNPL and other financial services in Asia.

Standard Chartered Bank (LON: STAN) has dipped its toes into Asian BNPL waters and signed a 10-year collaboration on financial services with Singapore’s Atome Financial, a unit of the Advance Intelligence Group. The Bank is making an equity investment in Atome, a BNPL platform focused on markets in Southeast Asia, as well as in Indonesian digital lending platform Kredit Pintar. It will also provide $500 million in financing to Atome. (Reuters)

The Advance Intelligence Group recently raised a US$400 million Series D round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Warburg Pincus. The round valued the company at over US$2 billion.

Standard Chartered Bank’s plans

The collaboration will initially include buy now pay later services to launch in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam in the next few months. Subsequently, it will expand to include other digital lending products.

“This marks one of Standard Chartered’s largest strategic investments in a fintech to-date and supports its ambition to expand its reach and scale within the mass market segment via a digital-first approach, underpinned by digital acquisition and new partnership models.”

According to the bank, the digital lending market in South East Asia is valued at US$92 billion.

“Our deep knowledge of Asia’s markets coupled with Atome Financial’s experience in digital consumer finance will allow us to reach even more customers and drive greater financial participation of those underserved and underbanked,” said Judy Hsu, CEO, Consumer, Private and Business Banking, Standard Chartered Bank.

“This partnership with Standard Chartered will allow us to expand our merchant network and help retailers increase their customer base and basket sizes, contributing to economic growth across the region,” said Jefferson Chen, Co-Founder, Group Chairman and CEO of Advance Intelligence Group, and CEO of Atome Financial.

In July, Grab, Southeast Asia’s super app, expanded its partnership with Adyen (AMS: ADYEN) by enabling more merchants – starting in Singapore and Malaysia – to offer PayLater payment options to consumers, in response to the increasing consumer demand for deferred payment methods.

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