BigPay has finalised up to US$100 million in financing from SK Group, one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates and tech innovators. This is the first time any portfolio company within AirAsia Digital has secured financing of this size.

“Our mission is to become a leading challenger bank across Southeast Asia,” said Salim Dhanani, CEO and co-founder of BigPay. “We’ve established ourselves in Malaysia as one of the leading providers of digital banking services, and we want to expand our product sets, along with growing the model to new markets. Thailand and the wider ASEAN is next, but we’ll be launching key products before that – with fully digital personal loans, transactional lending and an offering for mSMEs.”

AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes said that this is the first investment into one of AirAsia’s portfolio digital companies and a testament to their digital growth story. “SK Group is second to none when it comes to innovation and experience, so we truly believe they can share their expertise and know-how so that this investment can mark the beginning of a new exciting digital banking era,” Fernandes said.

Meanwhile, Jung Kyu Kim, chief representative of SK Malaysia said that SK Group will be able to make a significant contribution to BigPay in both technical and consumer service aspects given its experience and resources.

This announcement comes a few weeks after BigPay announced its application for a digital banking licence from Bank Negara Malaysia.

• TAGS:
• AirAsia
• AirAsia Digital
• BigPay
• Digital Banking
• Salim Dhanani
• SK Group
• Tony Fernandes