Jack Ma’s Shadow Looms Large for Banks Across Southeast Asia
- Ma’s Ant Financial is signing up partnerships in region
- Estimated 450 million people lack access to banking services
This article is for subscribers only.
Over the past two months, some 1,000 part-time workers for DBS Group Holdings Ltd. have fanned out across Singapore’s famed food courts, trying to entice mom-and-pop hawkers to use the bank’s digital payments service, called PayLah!
“Hawkers need speed, and they are afraid that using PayLah! may not be fast enough when the queues are very, very long,” 19-year-old Erica Chiang, who has signed up 50 food vendors in her seven weeks working for DBS, said on a sweltering Wednesday afternoon. “Once they know the product, they become interested."