The story of technology startups in Southeast Asia tying up with financial giants to lead payments innovation continues. Singapore gaming and peripherals company Razer entered into a partnership with Visa to create a Visa prepaid payment solution.
The service will be a minor programme in the Singapore company’s mobile payments app Razer Pay. It will allow mobile app users to top up and cash out easily at 54 million merchant locations that allow Visa payments in Southeast Asia and globally.
As many other fintech startups in the region have done, the partnership is tapping into the underbanked, but tech-savvy population in Southeast Asia which is driving a major shift toward digital payments in the region.
Razer’s Chief Technology Officer Li Meng Lee told TechCrunch that the company is keeping open the possibility of introducing a physical prepaid card at a later stage. Razer’s users already buy in-game credits at convenience stores and a fintech play is a natural extension of business for Razer.
The new service will be rolled out in the coming months in Southeast Asia starting from Malaysia and Singapore before expanding to other countries like the Philippines.
Razer says that the key value proposition of its payments innovation is that customers who pay at Visa merchants do not need to have a bank account – a requirement for most prepaid wallet services in the Southeast Asia region.
Razer claims that it processed more than $1.4 billion in dollar value last year, including its merchant services business, online and offline payments, and Razer Pay.
According to a KPMG report, only 27 percent of Southeast Asia’s 600 million people have a bank account. A Google survey indicates that 51 percent of the population of Southeast Asia are monthly active internet users.