Sea rebrands its fintech arm to Monee, a ‘cute’ name for an increasingly important business
The SEA, owner of the popular e-commerce Shopee platform, marked its 16th anniversary with a “cute” arm rebrand of financial services, its fastest growing business segment.
The Fintech Division of Tech Giant, formerly known as “Seamoney”, now gets a shorter title: Monee. The Rebranded Division will guard the two digital banks of the Tech company – Maribank in Singapore and Seabank in Indonesia and the Philippines – including lending payments and services.
“We chose the name Monee because it was simple, cute and, like the sea, easy to write and express,” Forrest Li, founder and CEO of the sea, said Thursday. The brand new is also aligned with the existing E-Commerce brand of the SEA, Shopee.
Sea, no. 20 in Southeast Asia 500, began as a gaming company. In 2015, the company launched Shopee. E-Commerce now generates most of the sea revenue, with the Shopee making up about three-quarters of $ 16.8 billion income in the latest fiscal year.
But Fintech becomes a fast -growing part of the sea business. Income from digital financial services hit $ 2.4 billion last year's fiscal, an increase of 34.6%. In the last three months of last year, the revenue of sea financial services rose by 55.2% year-year to reach $ 733.3 million, the fastest growing segment for that time.
The SEA generates income from lending to consumers and small and medium -sized businesses. As of December 31, 2024, the consumer and loans principal outstanding stand for $ 5.1 billion, up to 63.9% year-year.
On Thursday, Li told of how fintech had long been a core in the sea business. Even with its start as a game publisher, the SEA has set up its own payment network to allow users to buy in-game items. That led to the launch of AirPay's 2014, a general goal e-wallet, and then Shopeepay, an e-wallet integrated with the e-commerce platform. The SEA later launched digital banking apps in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore.
The child, mobile-friendly population of Southeast Asia is more open to contacting a digital financial platform. The less developed economies in the region also have significant underbanked populations, providing an avenue for players like sea to walk on digital banks.
The Fellow Tech Platform Grab has also switched to financial services, which has become a rapidly growing income segment for the Singaporean ride platform.
These tech platforms tap on user data from consumer-facing businesses such as e-commerce, hailing ride and food delivery to assess the risk for non-generated populations that are not usually served by traditional financial institutions.
During Monee's launch on Thursday, the second minister for Singapore's trade and industry said the amount of digital payment transaction in Southeast Asia reached $ 1.1 trillion last year, and doubled to 2030. Digital lending will also increase nearly $ 200 billion by 2030, from $ 70 billion last year.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
