IN an attempt to bolster the use of e-payments in Cambodia, the country’s Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MPWT) has signed a memorandum of understanding with ride-hailing company Grab, allowing it to operate within the Kingdom. The green light from the government also saw Grab form an alliance with Wing Money, a local mobile payment provider, aimed at helping Cambodian Grab drivers safeguard their finances.
The deal is a milestone for the five-year-old ride-hailing company, and also represents how Asian frontier markets are embracing mobile payments. While markets like China, Hong Kong and Singapore have made clear payment advances, the progress of frontier Asian markets has been given less attention. In addition to the recent Grab deal, Cambodia this past year has been the site for a couple of mobile wallet launches from Pi Pay to DaraPay.
Emerging Asia, including markets such as Indonesia, India, and Thailand among others, is predicted to represent the bulk of non-cash transactions by 2020, of around US$211.5 billion in transactions against the global amount of US$725.8 billion, according to data from Capgemini and BNP Paribas’ World Payments Report 2017.
Bangladesh signalled that it was planning to launch a national mobile payments system next year to make it easier for rural populations to buy goods and services via text message. The market is already home to Bkash, a mobile money service that has been very active in the country. Bkash claims that less than 15% of Bangladeshis are connected to the formal banking system, yet 68% of them have mobile phones. The company, however, has faced a number of issues recently, involving the misconduct of its agents with several parties calling for the company to re-evaluate their staff.
Adhering to the popularity of mobile payments, Mongolia’s Khan Bank, the largest bank in the country, this year released its Khan Pay application, a service where users can transact among each other using just a phone number or Facebook account. Mongolia, along with China, was cited as one of the only two countries where the majority of respondents showed a distinct preference for mobile payments. In a recent report by eMarketer showed that 63% of Mongolian participants preferred mobile payments over non-mobile payments.
Myanmar became a member of the Asian Payment Network (APN) enabling it to be part of a common regional settlement platform that includes countries like Singapore and South Korea. Ooredoo Myanmar, one of the country’s telecom providers, recently launched its own mobile money service called M-Pitesan allowing users to transfer and receive money. The launch comes off the back of rival company Telenor Myanmar’s own mobile money launch of Wave Money in 2016.
Sri Lankan telecom company Dialog Axiata recently built upon its popular eZ Cash mobile money service. The company last month announced a pilot payment programme with the Australian government to rollout 200 ATMs to be used by the eZ Cash mobile app to withdraw and deposit cash in rural areas of Sri Lanka.
In November, Vietnamese e-wallet Momo partnered with Uber to allow payments via its platform. This capped off a busy period for Vietnamese payments, which saw the introduction of Samsung Pay for the first time in September, and the arrival of Alipay via the its alliance with the National Payment Corporation of Vietnam.
