Up to 60 million users of Razer’s mobile wallet, Razer Pay, will be able to try out the newly-developed virtual prepaid solution by Visa for making payments wherever Visa is accepted without the need for a bank account or a credit card, both companies announced on Monday
We want to make sure that we are able to introduce the benefits of mobile and digital payments to [the under-banked and under-served population in Southeast Asia], in order to bring them up to the formal financial system, said Chris Clark, regional president of Visa Asia Pacific, in a statement.
The new Visa prepaid service will be available in Southeast Asia next month, starting from Malaysia and Singapore where Razer Pay is already available. The service will then be expanded to other countries including the Philippines, where the launch of Razer’s e-wallet is in the pipeline, said Limeng Lee, Visa’s chief strategy officer. «Fintech is the extension of what we have been doing. We’re currently focusing on Southeast Asia where we see massive opportunity. There’s a huge youth demographic and a lot of them are gamers… and these are usually the early adopters of new technology,» Lee said.
Southeast Asia’s mobile payments landscape grew rapidly in recent years, driven by high mobile penetration rates and the popularity of mobile services. In particular, Vietnam saw the highest growth globally in mobile payments use last year, with six Southeast Asian countries, including Singapore and Malaysia, in the top 10 markets for the shift to mobile, according to a survey by PwC in April this year.