Grab Financial expands merchant services

Grab Financial Group (GFG), the financial services arm of Grab, is expanding its merchant services, including offering more "buy-now-pay-later" (BNPL) options.

It has inked new partnerships with payment gateways 2C2P, Razer Merchant Services and iPay88, among others, to increase merchant adoption of its BNPL service, PayLater.

Megafurniture director Toh Teck Oon said that in the five months after enabling PayLater, the company's monthly average total payment volume and monthly transactions on GrabPay had increased by three times.

BNPL has been under scrutiny by the Monetary Authority of Singapore since February this year, as worries mount over increasing consumer debt risk. Consumers globally, though, appear to be still keen on BNPL, according to a Capgemini report.

"Merchants find PayLater compelling given the scale of Grab's ecosystem with over 25 million monthly transacting users, and many of our PayLater merchants have reported increased basket sizes and check-out rates," said Mr Chris Yeo, managing director and head of GrabPay at GFG.

GFG has also signed up more payment gateways to boost acceptance and adoption of its GrabPay wallet among merchants regionally. AsiaPay, Fomo Pay and Revenue Group are among the new payment gateways providing GrabPay to merchants.

GFG yesterday launched GrabMerchant Commerce, a platform that aids businesses in building websites for e-commerce. A pilot programme in May saw more than 500 merchants across industries signing up. The platform will offer support in areas such as marketing, automation and customer relationship management. Selected merchants on the platform will be accessible on the Grab app across South-east Asia by this month.

THE BUSINESS TIMES