Standard Chartered is investing in digital lending unicorn Atome Financial as part of a ten-year multi-product strategic partnership that will entail the roll out of buy now, pay later services across major Asian markets.
Atome Financial, which operates Asia’s largest buy now pay later platform, Atome, as well as digital lending platform Kredit Pintar in Indonesia, is a business unit under Advance Intelligence Group, which recently closed a $400M+ Series D financing round from an investor consortium led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Warburg Pincus, valuing the company at more than $2 billion.
Standard Chartered intends to provide $500 million in financing to Atome, its largest strategic investment in a fintech to-date, under a 10-year partnership to deliver personal banking services across Asia
The partnership will initially include buy now pay later services, targeting to roll out in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam in the next few months, and later expand to include digital lending products.
Together, the two companies aspire to reach over 16 million customers by 2025 and gain access to an expanded merchant network in order to capture a share of the digital lending market, valued at $92 billion by 2025 in South East Asia alone.
Judy Hsu, CEO, consumer, private and business banking, Standard Chartered Bank, says: “Riding on our successful digital ventures and partnerships, we continue to be fearlessly innovative in disrupting ourselves to better serve our clients. This partnership with Atome Financial gives us the opportunity to be part of the rapidly growing digital consumer finance ecosystem. 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.”