{"id":4847,"date":"2026-08-03T23:11:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T23:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4847"},"modified":"2026-08-03T23:11:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T23:11:24","slug":"seas-maribank-wants-to-export-its-singapore-digital-banking-playbook-first-stop-the-philippines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4847","title":{"rendered":"Sea\u2019s Maribank wants to export its Singapore digital banking playbook\u2014first stop, the Philippines"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cOur local banks are good, and international banks also have a strong presence here,\u201d Natalia Goh, MariBank\u2019s CEO, told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cBut there are certain banking needs that are still underserved.\u201d<\/p>\n

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MariBank\u2019s answer is a business account with zero transaction fees and a single app that lets customers toggle between personal and business banking. \u201cThese needs are the white spaces that nobody\u2019s really addressing,\u201d Goh explains. \u201cThat\u2019s what makes it exciting, and that\u2019s where I think we have room to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

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MariBank launched in 2023 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sea, Southeast Asia\u2019s largest tech firm and No. 12 on the Southeast Asia 500. Goh assumed her role as the bank\u2019s CEO in 2024, taking over from its inaugural head Zheng Yudong.<\/p>\n

Goh sees Maribank as a \u201cnatural extension\u201d of Sea\u2019s offerings on e-commerce site Shopee and financial payments platform Monee, which sit \u201cat the heart\u201d of its users\u2019 digital lives. \u201cSea\u2019s existing businesses give it insights and a good understanding of what consumers do online,\u201d Goh said. \u201cBanking was the obvious next piece of the puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n

MariBank is one of five Singaporean digital banks set up after a 2019 ruling that empowered the monetary authority to issue standalone digital banking licenses. (A digital bank is a financial institution that operates entirely online through mobile apps and websites without any physical brick-and-mortar branches.) Other Singaporean digital banks include Trust Bank, which is a collaboration between Standard Chartered Bank and supermarket chain FairPrice Group, and GXS bank, a partnership between telco Singtel and superapp Grab.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Asia\u2019s first digital banks emerged in Hong Kong, mainland China, and South Korea; Southeast Asia followed soon afterward. \u201cIn ASEAN, especially, digital banking licenses encourage greater participation and innovation in the banking sector, and make banking services more accessible to the masses,\u201d Goh says.<\/p>\n

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Still, the promise of digital banking has yet to be realized. Among Singapore\u2019s digital banks which cater to retail consumers, only Trust Bank is profitable, posting its first profitable month in March.<\/p>\n

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In 2025, MariBank Singapore posted a , larger than the 51.3 million loss reported the year before. Fellow digital bank GXS also posted a 208 million Singapore dollar loss last year, a slight narrowing of its 214 million Singapore dollar loss in 2024.<\/p>\n

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Each bank has a tight window to prove themselves. As part of the application process, each digital bank had to show a credible path to profitability within five years of launch. (MariBank, which launched in 2023, thus has a three-year runway; In January, parent group Sea injected $75 million Singapore dollars, or $58.6 million, into the bank, in a bid to help it scale.)<\/p>\n

Both MariBank and GXS are now pushing into less-banked markets like Malaysia and the Philippines. GXS is a lead shareholder in GXBank, Malaysia\u2019s first digital bank. MariBank debuted in the Philippines last year, following Sea\u2019s acquisition of the rural bank Banco Laguna. Last month, the Philippines\u2019 central bank upgraded MariBank\u2019s license from that of a rural bank to a full-fledged digital bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The share of Filipinos with bank accounts jumped from 29% in 2019 to 56% in 2021 during the pandemic, according to the Philippine Information Agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea is, with the product knowledge that we build up in Singapore, we can bring it across and deploy that in the Philippines,\u201d Goh says. \u201cWe can localize it to the Filipino market, by lowering ticket sizes and changing the features a little.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Unlike in Singapore, MariBank in the Philippines has had to adapt to a market that still relies on physical cash. According to Worldpay\u2019s 2026 Global Payments Report, cash still holds 42% of point-of-sale payments in the Philippines, despite the rising popularity of e-wallets like GCash. As such, MariBank is piloting cash-in, cash-out partnerships with local retail outlets, something it doesn\u2019t need to do in Singapore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSingapore is very much moving towards being cashless, and the Philippines is also heading in that direction, but there\u2019s still quite a need for cash,\u201d Goh explains.<\/p>\n

Goh admits that MariBank is still in the \u201cgrowth stage\u201d in the Philippines; the company has yet to offer investment and overseas remittance products to its user-base. Still, she\u2019s confident that MariBank Philippines can quickly scale, given Sea\u2019s other offerings in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cShoppers are already acquainted with the Shopee name,\u201d Goh explains.\u00a0\u201cThat becomes a natural point for us to introduce MariBank, since it\u2019s associated with a brand that they already know.\u201d (Goh declined to share exact user numbers in the Philippines, but said the bank is on a \u201creally good growth trajectory.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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MariBank is also leveraging Sea\u2019s own data to underwrite loans in a market with a thin formal credit history. \u201cThe Philippines\u2019 credit bureau data is not as strong or robust, given that a lot of the population there may not have an existing credit product,\u201d Goh says. \u201cSo we use quite a bit of data from Shopee to help us judge creditworthiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goh hopes that the Philippines will be the first step towards building a regional digital banking group, headquartered in Singapore. \u201cSingapore is a sophisticated banking market, so it\u2019ll be our hub for innovation, talent and strategy,\u201d she says, adding that MariBank remains \u201copen\u201d to further expansion (though declined to name specific markets).<\/p>\n

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Ultimately, for Goh, the goal is straightforward: to make banking simple, reliable and rewarding. \u201cNo matter how much we expand, we will always stay true to these values,\u201d she concluded. \u201cThey\u2019ll continue being reflected in our product designs and the propositions that we roll out.\u201d<\/p>\n

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MariBank launched in 2023 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sea, Southeast Asia\u2019s largest tech firm and No. 12 on the Southeast Asia 500.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banks"],"yoast_head":"\nSea\u2019s Maribank wants to export its Singapore digital banking playbook\u2014first stop, the Philippines - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4847\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sea\u2019s Maribank wants to export its Singapore digital banking playbook\u2014first stop, the Philippines - 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