Grab Financial Group launches ‘Grow with Grab’ roadmap

• Comprehensive suite of financial services for Southeast Asia’s SMEs and GrabPay users
• Pay with GrabPay enables users to transact online starting with 11Street, Qoo10

GRAB Financial Group, a Southeast Asian fintech player, on March 19 announced its 'Grow with Grab' roadmap, with the launch of SME lending, new features to the GrabPay mobile wallet for users and micro -insurance for drivers in Singapore.

The ‘Grow with Grab’ roadmap aims to provide the most comprehensive portfolio of financial services in Southeast Asia for micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses.

The roadmap includes a range of other new services, including micro-insurance products, post-paid and instalment payment services as well as ‘Pay with GrabPay’, an online check-out payment method for online sellers.

'Grow with Grab' marks the Grab Financial Group’s full-scale push into lending and insurance. 

The roadmap puts Grab Financial in a strong position in financial services, as the group seeks to bring more possibilities to micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Grab Financial Group aims to become both the region’s largest payments and financial services platform in 2019. It also aims to become both one of the region’s largest merchant networks with, the largest insurtech policy provider and the biggest fintech lender, all within one platform.

“We are doubling down on our financial services offering for micro-entrepreneurs with 'Grow with Grab'. This is a huge untapped opportunity for Grab Financial to support the region’s entrepreneurs who are less able to access traditional financial institutions. While SMEs contribute more than 50% of Asean’s GDP, two thirds of SMEs cite business funding and financing as their biggest problem.

“The Grab app has served more than nine million micro-entrepreneurs over the last six years. As a result, we can leverage our scale and data insights to bring financial services products to market at a more competitive price point than anyone else,” said Grab Financial Group senior managing director Reuben Lai.

In the next few weeks, Grab Financial will be launching new services from the ‘Grow with Grab’ roadmap that enable micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses to grow their earnings, grow their business and protect their livelihoods.

New payments technologies

Grab Financial’s new payments technologies will allow more micro and small businesses to benefit from the Grab user base: ‘Pay with GrabPay’ online check-out and Point-of-Sale (POS) device integration.

‘Pay with GrabPay’ online check-out allows online sellers to accept GrabPay as a mobile wallet on their website or platform. Customers can buy their goods online from the same familiar, convenient and secure GrabPay wallet they use on a daily basis for Grab rides and food orders.

The ‘Pay with GrabPay’ online check-out was launched on March 19 with micro and small businesses on local e-commerce platforms such as Qoo10, and 11Street, two of the largest e-commerce platforms in Singapore and Malaysia respectively.

In Malaysia, the online check-out method was recently introduced with merchants like 11Street and BusOnlineTicket.com. Coming soon will be Caring Pharmacy, MBO Cinemas, Doublewoot and KLIA Ekspres.

‘Pay with GrabPay’ agreements have also been signed with merchant gateways in the region, including Adyen, Boku, iPay88, Dragonpay as well as brands including Cathay Cineplexes in Singapore and SM Cinema in the Philippines.

“Adding to the convenience of online payments, we will be partnering with BillPay in Malaysia which will enable users to pay their utility bills such as Astro, Celcom, Telekom Malaysia and Syabas.

“Since launch, one in five GrabPay users in Malaysia now uses the app daily for their everyday needs from transport to food and parcel delivery. With adding new use cases for users to pay with GrabPay, we are well on our way to becoming the everyday super app,” said Ooi Huey Tyng (pic, above), managing director of GrabPay Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.

In terms of POS device integration, business owners with POS devices can tap into Grab’s Asean-wide user base, without having to change their hardware or sales and accounting systems. Merchants can simply add GrabPay as a payment method on their existing POS device.

Grow businesses with micro-loans 

Since announcing the joint-venture with Credit Saison last March, Grab has pushed into the lending space across Southeast Asia.

In the last 12 months, the joint-venture has partnered with financial institutions to provide lending pilots to Grab driver-partners. The fintech platform has also started providing working capital loans to help small businesses grow in Singapore.

Grab Financial Group is now pursuing lending licenses across Southeast Asia.

The joint-venture on March 19 launched its first full-scale product: ‘Pay Later’, a post-paid and instalment payment service respectively. ‘Pay Later’, the post-paid payment service will launch first in Singapore in the next few weeks, following which it will expand to other countries.

‘Pay Later’ offers a post-paid payment facility which allows customers to pay for Grab services at the end of the month, without additional costs.

In the next few months, Grab will also launch a ‘Pay Later’ instalment payment product which allows consumers to buy goods right away and spread instalment payments at a 0% interest rate over multiple months.

Both products will be offered only to Grab’s most creditworthy customers. Grab Financial Group determines credit risk based on a stringent set of criteria, which includes tenure on the Grab platform, frequency of use and spending patterns. 

Gain peace of mind with micro-insurance

Following the announcement of its joint-venture with Zhong An in January, Grab will launch its  insurance marketplace in April. The digital insurance marketplace will offer insurance for micro-entrepreneurs in the region, directly available from the Grab app.

In Singapore, Grab has already launched free medical leave insurance for the majority of its driver-partners on top of Grab’s free existing personal accident insurance.

Eligible driver-partners under the Emerald Circle programme are automatically covered for lost earnings due to illness and injuries.

In the next few weeks, Grab will make the following products directly available from the Grab app, starting with Singapore and expanding across Southeast Asia after:

• Prolonged medical leave insurance: This voluntary policy supplements the earlier announced policy. It allows driver-partners who are already covered to top-up for more coverage, and enables the driver-partners who are not in eligible tiers of the Emerald Circle program to affordably access this insurance for the first time
• Personal accident insurance: The personal accident insurance offering in the Grab app will allow driver-partners to top-up their existing insurance policies for more coverage.

 By leveraging the scale of the Grab platform, Grab Financial can offer policies at affordable rates and tailor them to the lifestyle needs of micro-entrepreneurs.

Beyond the two products launching in the next few weeks, Grab Financial also revealed an insurance product roadmap for the rest of 2019.

The roadmap covers ‘pay-as-you-drive’ automotive insurance with fractionalised premiums, which allow driver-partners to only pay for insurance when they are driving as well as micro-life insurance and critical illness insurance policies.

Over the course of 2018, Grab has managed to attract a range of partners to build payments and financial services infrastructure tailored to the needs of micro-entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia.

Lai concludes, “We are beating Southeast Asia’s fragmentation problem by bringing together the largest payments and financial services ecosystem. We have opened up our platform for more than 100 partners across a diverse set of industries ranging from malls to card networks and banks.”