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Credit lender Kredivo expands to Vietnam
Kredivo chief operating officer Valery Crottaz said Vietnam was a "logical choice" due to its low credit card penetration rate.
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Kredivo mobile app (Courtesy of Kredivo)
F
ollowing an announcement that it would go public, credit lending start-up Kredivo said on Friday that it had expanded operations to Vietnam as its first market outside Indonesia.
The start-up wrote in a statement that it had formed a joint venture, Kredivo Vietnam Joint Stock Company, with Vietnamese investment firm Phoenix Holdings to facilitate the expansion. The joint venture will be operated by VietCredit.
Kredivo, operated by the Singapore-headquartered FinAccel, will offer its "buy now, pay later" service for bill payments in Vietnam. The start-up plans to introduce a similar service for e-commerce payments in the fourth quarter of this year.
“Vietnam is the logical choice considering the low credit card penetration in the country and the rapidly growing middle class,” Kredivo chief operating officer Valery Crottaz explained in the statement.
The World Bank’s 2017 Global Findex database puts Vietnam’s credit card ownership rate at 4 percent, the third lowest of Southeast Asia’s six biggest economies, after the Philippines at 2 percent and Indonesia at 2 percent.
Kredivo cited Vietnam’s strong e-commerce growth and the similarity of its demographic and consumption patterns to those of Indonesia as other reasons for its decision. The credit lender had initially eyed the Philippines and Thailand as potential first foreign markets.
“A service like PayLater will fill consumer demand where credit services are facing too big a hurdle,” said Phoenix Holdings chief executive Nguyen Lan Trung Anh.
