Southeast Asia gains 8.5 million fintech users in Q1

Southeast Asia gained 8.5 milliom unique fintech users in the first quarter of 2023, according to a new report.

The Robocash Group study was conducted in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand and considered 12 fintech categories, including alternative lending, blockchain, wealth management, digital banking, digital insurance, e-Commerce, financial advising, payments & transfers and others.

The previous study estimated the number of fintech users in SEA at 420.5 million in 2022. In Q1, 2023, this figure increased by 2%. The total number of mobile fintech users amounted to 428.97 million, and the number of fintech accounts - to 1.419 billion (because one user usually has several accounts).

The main increase in the number of customers occurred due to the growth of e-Commerce, which gained 6.2 mln new users. Traditionally, this sector has been a driver of fintech in the region. In 2022, its volumes were estimated by Google at $131 billion.

The fastest growing sector in terms of new fintech users was Financial Advising (+25%). It may be associated with a gradual increase in the level of financial literacy and interest in personal finance management, given that SEA countries continue taking initiatives for financial education of the population. Also, interest in the services of financial advisors is confirmed by the results of a WEF survey, according to which in 2022, 33% of respondents wanted to learn financial literacy particularly from financial advisors.

Alternative lending also showed a 7.3% increase in the number of new customers. This may indicate the growing interest of users in the online lending sector, which is confirmed by the data from the Robocash Group report. According to it, between 2020 and 2023, search queries of online loans showed the largest growth among all lending-related requests. Another report of the group stated that between 2000 and 2022, the number of fintech companies in SEA increased by 3,588% from 34 to 1,254. Along with it, alternative lending and payments were two of the most dominating categories of fintech services in South and Southeast Asia in 2022.
At the same time, the penetration of fintech services in SEA among the population aged 15+ has reached 83.3%.

"According to our estimates, Singapore has the highest fintech penetration level, which is 94.3%. This country with a population of just over 6 million people has attracted about 51.3% of all funds raised by fintech in SEA for the whole time," says Robocash Group.

"Also, about a third of fintech companies in SEA are headquartered in Singapore, which explains its leading position in the ranking."