KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 6 — AirAsia Group’s e-wallet unit BigPay has secured up to US$100 million in financing from South Korean conglomerate SK Group to further its mission to become the leading challenger bank in Southeast Asia.

BigPay chief executive officer and co-founder Salim Dhanani said its mission is to become a leading challenger bank across Southeast Asia.

"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 micro, small and medium enterprises,” he said in a statement.

This is the first time any portfolio company within AirAsia Digital has secured financing of this size.

The funding from one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates and tech innovator further strengthens AirAsia’s Digital’s endeavour as it accelerates the scope of growth for its digital businesses, including logistics and financial services.

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

BigPay’s current offering includes a prepaid debit card which can be used to spend anywhere that Visa or Mastercard is accepted, local and international money transfers, micro-insurance, bill payments and a budgeting tool. — Bernama