Grab and Singtel will bid for a digital-banking licence in Singapore
Jan 2nd 2020IN 2014 SINGTEL, a Singaporean telecoms group, teamed up with Standard Chartered, an Asia-focused bank, to create Dash, a mobile-money unit it claimed would “revolutionise mobile commerce and banking”. But red tape meant it went nowhere fast. It refocused on mobile payments, but still struggled. Insiders liked to quip, says one, that “the only place that accepted Dash was Singtel’s canteen”.Singtel’s banking ambitions are no longer a joke. On December 30th it said it was tying up with Grab, a car-hailing firm, to bid for a digital-banking licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Together, the two firms are well-placed to benefit from one of the city state’s biggest financial reforms in two decades—and perhaps, to shake up banking across South-East Asia, a market of 655m.Choose us for news analysis that respects your time and intelligenceSubscribe to The EconomistWe filter out the noise of the daily news cycle and analyse the trends that matterWe give you rigorous, deeply researched and fact-checked journalism. That’s why Americans named us their most trusted news source in 2017Available wherever you are—in print, digital and, uniquely, in audio, fully narrated by professional broadcastersThis website adheres to all nine of NewsGuard‘s standards of credibility and transparency.ORContinue reading this articleRegister with an email address