KUALA LUMPUR: CIMB Group Holdings Bhd, via its subsidiary, Touch n’ Go Sdn Bhd (TNG), has entered into an equity Joint Venture (JV) with China-based Ant Financial Services Group (Ant Financial) to launch an “e-wallet” using technology pioneered by Alipay.
Ant Financial currently provides digital financial services to over 520 million users in China through its operations, namely Alipay, Ant Fortune, Zhima Credit and MYBank.
“We cannot at this moment divulge the breakdown of the investments from both parties or when the JV will materialise, but it is sufficient to say that TNG is the majority shareholder,” said chief executive officer of CIMB Group Asset Management and Investments, Effendy Shahul Hamid, at the JV signing ceremony earlier today.
“We can however share that this JV will leverage on the strength of TNG, which currently has some 10 million active cards in circulation,” he added.
When asked if TNG will eventually tap into CIMB Group’s existing strength in Asean for the e-wallet, Effendy said that there are no plans for that as yet and that both firms will be focusing on Malaysia for the time being.
Ant Financial's general manager of Alipay SEA Region, Dayong Zhang, said that the e-wallet collaboration in Malaysia is for now exclusive to TNG, but the firm is looking for other local partners for other areas of the fintech space here.
“The fintech landscape needs to have as many providers as possible and we are always looking for suitable partners to collaborate with,” said Zhang.
“As you know, Ant Financial is already enabling local partners in India, South Korea and other parts of Southeast Asia. This is also something that we are looking to replicate in Malaysia,” he added.
Malaysia is the first country to join the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP), a programme initiated by Alibaba Group executive chairman Jack Ma to help small and medium-sized enterprises easily expand their trading capabilities worldwide.