More Chinese participants are expected to join the race for the much-coveted Singapore's virtual bank licenses. On the lead is iFast Corporation leading a consortium with two Chinese partners, Yillion Group and Hande Group.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore or MAS will grant digital banking licenses to five would-be participants. Recipients of the licenses are to be announced in mid-2020.
Whoever joins their fellow Chinese tech firms are on the right track as the digital lending market in Southeast Asia is estimated to grow to as much as $110 billion by 2025. This is according to estimates from Bain & Co, Google, and Singapore's Temasek Holdings.
Estimate for the booming fintech sector in the south-east region is comparable with what analysts expect from the United States. Financial observers described fundings in the country's digital space as "skyrocketing" at more than $30 billion within this year.
The leading American digital bank, Chime, is currently valued at $5.6 billion. By comparison, the relatively young player in the country's financial space is larger than the old timers.
Chime's value is bigger than New York Community Bancorp, CIT Group, Synovus Financial Corporation among others. Chime was able to accumulate more than $3 billion in venture funding just within its first three quarters this year.
With that US tech giants are planning to join the digital banking space with Apple and Goldman Sachs collaborating in launching a credit cars; and Facebook sounding up a new global currency.
Yillion Group and Hande Group, meanwhile, will compete with a consortium of Singapore-based fintech led by Advance.AI. This consortium consists of Sheng Ye Capital, which is listed in Hong Kong and PhillipCapital, which is listed in Singapore.
Other players vying for Singapore's digital banking license are Beyond Consortium consists of V3 Group and EZ-Link. Other members of the consortium are Singapore Business Federation, Temasek unit Helicona Capital Management, MSIG Insurance, and Far East Organization.
Early in the race were gaming company Razer, Grab Holdings, Jack Ma's Ant Financial, and Tiktok's owner ByteDance Technology.
In China, Yillion Group operates a digital bank. It also has Grab's strong rival, Meituan Dianping, as one of its key shareholders. Hande Group, meanwhile, is already one among fintech players within China.
In their potential participation in Singapore's digital banking space, the firms hope to bring solutions to the small-and-medium sized enterprises or SMEs in the country.
SMEs contributed to about $200 billion to Singapore's economy. As of April 2019, Singapore is home to 220,000 SMEs.
