• The cashless system will keep expanding and digitisation will accelerate, both of which help the lending side of the business from a data standpoint
• Grab Financial Group’s core motto is to serve the markets that still strongly rely on cash, with an end goal to build a strong merchant platform by partnering with banks
• SME financing is a key pillar of Grab’s growth strategy

Working rapidly and decisively during the COVID-19 crisis, Grab has seen nearly a 30% growth in first-time cashless users for food delivery between the months of February 2020 and March 2020. As of the first quarter of 2020, there are 387,000 active loans across its driver-partners, merchant-partners and consumers via GrabFinance. The company continues to work on solving key pain points for its merchants, and through its remote GrabPay link, Grab was able to get a significant number of merchants online.

In this interview, Grab’s Ankur Mehrotra further elaborates on the challenges that social distancing has brought on and what the company has been working on to improve its services across all of its businesses.

The structure of Grab Financial Group

Foo Boon Ping (FBP): The market for payments around the region is $500 billion and you have ride hailing, food, financial services and lending. How big is the Grab Financial Group (GFG) in terms of assets?

Ankur Mehrotra (AM): We are one of the largest groups within financial groups in Southeast Asia that has a complete set of financial offerings in fintech lending, e-wallet, insurance and our recently-launched wealth piece. We’re the only one that has an e-wallet licence in all the key countries or the key markets that we operate in – Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.

FBP: Is payments separate from the Grab Financial Group?

AM: Just a s...

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