Pay to play

Burn some to earn some: GrabPay’s monetisation conundrum

Super app Grab wants financial services to account for nearly half of its revenue by 2023, and growing its e-wallet is key. Grab has landed early partnerships, but even retail deals won’t stem GrabPay’s significant burn rate

Benjamin Cher, 28 Jul 2021

Wallets are heavy loss-makers: Grab's financial services division, for instance, posted Ebitda losses of US$200M and US$400M in 2018 and 2020

But e-wallet GrabPay must continue to burn cash to remain relevant and top of mind for users so that Grab can unlock lucrative financial services

Grab wooed online and offline payment partners to collect more accurate user data, even before its highly-anticipated digital bank comes online

But the task is tough as rivals harbour similarly aggressive financial services goals, and Southeast Asia is a highly fragmented region

As it prepares for a record-breaking SPAC listing, Singapore-headquartered super app Grab has also been busy on one particular front. It’s really trying to get people using its e-wallet, GrabPay.

Just last week, GrabPay deepened deepened DealstreetAsia Read more its five-year partnership with payments platform Adyen to expand its buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) option. In May, it partnered partnered TechinAsia GrabPay announces payments tie-up with Stripe Read more with global payments major Stripe to let Southeast Asian businesses offer GrabPay as a payment method.

AUTHOR

Benjamin Cher

Based in Singapore, Ben covers news and stories from the hub of Southeast Asia. He covers the intersection of technology and business, and how it affects Singapore and Southeast Asia. Ben was previously a reporter at The Edge Singapore.

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