Southeast Asia is home to many of the world’s largest emerging economies, identifying a need to accommodate the region’s rapidly growing population. Many firms are also making the most of the region’s adoption of technology and open attitude to innovation, leading to its high rate of technological cut-through. In particular, smartphone usage in Southeast Asia is enormous when compared to western economies, with the number of users expected to rise to 326.3m throughout this year meaning that in some countries such as Thailand. This forms the perfect landscape for embedded finance to thrive.
Euromonitor’s 2022 report on the growth of the digital economy predicts that ecommerce sales across the Asia Pacific region will double to USD 2 trillion by 2025. The report author also added, “There is a significant appetite and opportunity here for digital transformation and bringing together embedded finance and ecommerce makes a lot of sense”, confirming that combining fintech with ecommerce is a step in the right direction and that companies are ready to embrace the benefits.