E-Money More Popular than Credit Cards in Southeast Asia

Five Southeast Asian Countries have attracted non-banks to build regional electronic wallet platforms, with total e-money transactions exceeding 10 billion.

Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand saw over 10 billion e-money transactions occur in 2018. Singapore led the region, accounting for 34 percent of total e-money transactions, having attracted nonbanks to build regional electronic wallet platforms, according to the inaugural 2019 Southeast Asia E-Money Market Report released by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

E-wallets aligned with high frequency and scalable use cases like ride-hailing and e-commerce are likely to grow and garner market share across the region. The volume of transactions processed through e-wallets is gaining steam. For example, we estimate that e-wallets’ share of total e-money volumes in Indonesia grew to 36 percent in 2018 from less than 10 percent in 2017, said Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, CFA, Fintech Analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The popularity of e-money products by non-banks for small-value transactions is supporting the rise of ride-hailing and e-commerce companies as financial intermediaries across Southeast Asia, the research firm noted.

Payments processed through platforms offered by ride-hailing companies Grab and Go-Jek; TrueMoney, a unit of e-commerce and fintech company Ascend Group; and AirPay, the financial services business of e-commerce and gaming company Sea amounted to roughly US$30 billion in aggregate annualized transaction value in 2018, according to the research firm’s estimates.