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.

The expansion comes as FinAccel plans to go public through a merger with a blank-check firm, VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings II, that would value FinAccel at US$2.5 billion. The deal also gives the fintech firm gross proceeds of $430 million, including a $120 million private investment.

Kredivo, self-described as the largest "buy now, pay later" platform in Indonesia, affords customers instant credit financing for e-commerce and offline purchases as well as personal loans, based on artificial intelligence-enabled real-time decision-making.

The company claims to have nearly 4 million approved customers and a presence across eight of the top 10 e-commerce merchants in Indonesia.