Grab unveils 'Grow with Grab' roadmap for SMEs with new offerings

Grab Financial Group has introduced its "Grow with Grab" roadmap, in line with the launch of SME lending, and micro-insurance for drivers in Singapore.The "Grow with Grab" roadmap aims to provide a portfolio of financial services in Southeast Asia for micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses. The roadmap includes a range of other new services, including micro-insurance products, post-paid and instalment payment services as well as "Pay with GrabPay", an online check-out payment method for online sellers.In the next few weeks, Grab Financial will be launching its new offerings from the "Grow with Grab" roadmap. These include: "Pay with GrabPay" online check-out and Point-of-Sale (POS) device integrationThe "Pay with GrabPay" online check-out launches with micro- and small businesses on local e-commerce platforms such as Qoo10, and 11Street, two e-commerce platforms in Singapore and Malaysia respectively. "Pay with GrabPay" agreements have also been signed with some of the region’s merchant gateways, such as Adyen, Boku, iPay88, Dragonpay as well as key brands including Cathay Cineplexes in Singapore and SM Cinema in the Philippines. "Pay with GrabPay" online check-out allows online sellers to accept GrabPay as a mobile wallet on their website or platform. Customers can buy their goods online from the GrabPay wallet.With POS device integration, business owners with POS devices can tap into Grab’s ASEAN-wide user base, without having to change their hardware or sales and accounting systems. Merchants will be able to add GrabPay as a payment method on their existing POS device. The payment method will first launch in Singapore with merchants such as coffee chain Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and bakery chain Paris Baguette, following which it will expand across the region. "Pay Later", a post-paid and instalment payment service"Pay Later" offers a post-paid payment facility which allows customers to pay for Grab services at the end of the month, without additional costs. The ride-hailing company aims to help consumers who face exceptional expenses, but are keen to avoid being hit with higher credit card or personal loan interest payments with this new offering. In the following months, Grab will also launch a "Pay Later" instalment payment product which allows consumers to buy goods right away and spread instalment payments at a 0% interest rate over multiple months.Both products will be offered only to Grab’s "most creditworthy" customers. Grab Financial Group determines credit risk based on a stringent set of criteria, which includes tenure on the Grab platform, frequency of use and spending patterns.Since its joint-venture with Credit Saison last year, Grab has pushed into the lending space across Southeast Asia. In the last 12 months, the joint-venture partnered with financial institutions to provide successful lending pilots to Grab driver-partners. The fintech platform has also started providing working capital loans to help small businesses grow in Singapore. With the SME and driver loans facilitated to date, it is now pursuing lending licenses across Southeast Asia.Part of Grab's full-scale push into lending and insurance, the roadmap looks to place Grab Financial in a strong position in financial services, as the group seeks to bring more possibilities to micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses. Grab Financial Group also looks to become the region’s payments and financial services platform in 2019 as well as one of the region’s merchant networks with, the insurtech policy provider and the fintech lender, all within one platform. The Grab Financial Group aims to leverage this scale to negotiate the "best" deals for its entrepreneur partners and pass savings on to them.Meanwhile, following its joint-venture with Zhong An earlier this year, Grab will launch its insurance marketplace in April. The digital insurance marketplace will represent the insurance offering for micro-entrepreneurs in the region, directly available from the Grab app.In Singapore, Grab already launched free medical leave insurance for the majority of its driver-partners on top of Grab’s free existing personal accident insurance. Eligible driver-partners under the Emerald Circle program are automatically covered for lost earnings due to illness and injuries. In the next few weeks, Grab will make the following products directly available from the Grab app, starting with Singapore and expanding across Southeast Asia after: Prolonged medical leave insurance: This voluntary policy supplements the earlier announced policy. It allows driver-partners who are already covered to top-up for more coverage, and enables the driver-partners who are not in eligible tiers of the Emerald Circle program to affordably access this insurance for the first time. Personal accident insurance: The personal accident insurance offering in the Grab app will allow driver-partners to top-up their existing insurance policies for more coverage.By leveraging the scale of the Grab platform, Grab Financial looks to offer policies at the "most affordable" rates and tailor them to the lifestyle needs of micro-entrepreneurs. Beyond the two products launching in the next few weeks, Grab Financial also revealed an insurance product roadmap for the rest of 2019. The roadmap covers "pay-as-you-drive" automotive insurance with fractionalised premiums, which allow driver-partners to only pay for insurance when they are driving as well as micro-life insurance and critical illness insurance policies.Reuben Lai, senior managing director, Grab Financial Group said that the company is doubling down on our financial services offering for micro-entrepreneurs with "Grow with Grab", adding that it is an untapped opportunity for Grab Financial to support the region’s entrepreneurs who are less able to access traditional financial institutions."While SMEs contribute more than 50% of ASEAN’s GDP, two thirds of SMEs cite business funding and financing as their biggest problem. The Grab app has served more than nine million micro-entrepreneurs over the last six years. As a result, we can leverage our scale and data insights to bring financial services products to market at a more competitive price point than anyone else,” he said.“We are beating Southeast Asia’s fragmentation problem by bringing together the largest payments and financial services ecosystem. We have opened up our platform for more than 100 partners across a diverse set of industries ranging from malls to card networks and banks," Lai added.Read also:Grab bags US$4.5bn funding for new services and Indonesia expansionGrab to charge a SG$4 cancellation fee: A good business strategy to retain drivers?Grab launches video streaming in Indo, 3 more SEA markets to followGrabFood to fold into Grab app by first half of 2019