Standard Chartered Plc on Wednesday (Oct. 13) announced a 10-year partnership with Singapore-based buy now, pay later platform Atome Financial, making it the first major bank to jump into the sector across Asia, according to a Reuters report.
Through the collaboration, Standard Chartered will invest an undisclosed amount of equity in Atome, which has customers across Southeast Asia and beyond, and Indonesian digital lending platform Kredit Pintar. A statement from Standard Chartered called the move one of their “largest strategic investments in a FinTech to date.”
Standard Chartered will also provide financing of $500 million to support Atome Financial as it works to expand its merchants and customer bases.
The Standard Chartered-Atome partnership will launch in Southeast Asia with buy now, pay later services in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam in the next few months before expanding into digital lending, according to the joint announcement from the companies.
“This will allow us to aggressively scale credit products to small businesses and retail customers, including buy now, pay later,” Standard Chartered’s CEO Bill Winters said at a recent event in London.
Related: Standard Chartered and Demica Team on Digital Portal
Earlier this week, Standard Chartered partnered with working capital FinTech Demica on a new online portal to streamline access to the bank’s supplier finance program.
The collaboration will start with a fully digitized end-to-end Supplier Enrollment portal, according to the joint announcement. It also gives the bank’s enrollment team access to dashboards that allow monitoring and sending updates to company leaders.
The portal “leverages Demica’s extensive supply chain finance product capabilities and flexible technology,” according to the Standard Chartered announcement, and will be executed on Demica’s cloud-based platform.
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