SCB is well positioned to deepen its presence in digital finance. First, it is large and well capitalized. It is Thailand’s No. 4 lender by total assets and the industry leader in wealth management with a total customer base of 400,000 and AUM of more than 1.8 trillion baht at the end of 2023.
Further, it already has a well-established digital presence. Of its 17 million customers, 14 million, or 80%, are users of its mobile banking platform SCB Easy. The app ranks among the country's top 10 apps and the top three for banking in terms in terms of usage. Further, the total number of users of the bank's digital apps and related digital services is 25 million.
While SCB pulled out of a planned US$500 million acquisition of the Thai crypto exchange Bitkub in 2022, it has not abandoned its digital asset ambitions. Rather, it has recalibrated with an eye on less risky projects. Most notably, in mid-October, SCB and Singapore’s Lightnet launched Thailand’s first stablecoin for cross-border payments and remittances. SCB and Lightnet say that the services reduces operation costs and eliminates pre-funding between partners. Users can use local currencies for making transactions and experience improved reliability and availability, with the service accessible 24/7.
Following the launch of the stablecoin, Thai fintech SCB 10X (a subsidiary of SCB) rolled out a wallet to enable the use of US dollar- and Thai baht-pegged stablecoins. The Rubie Wallet is being trialed by foreign visitors at the Devcon event in Bangkok while it is still part of the Bank of Thailand (BOT) and Thai Securities and Exchange Commission regulatory sandbox.
In addition, SCB and Kakao Bank submitted an application for a Thailand virtual bank license in September. While more than 80% of Thais have a bank account, limiting the low-hanging fruit, Kakao Bank has experience building an online bank in a market that is even better banked than Thailand, and making it profitable quickly. Kakao Bank has designed a large suite of products that with some tweaking could be applicable to the Thai market.
"We will improve the user experience of virtual banking services by cooperating with Kakao Bank, which is considered one of the success stories of digital banks in the global market," SCBx CEO Arshid Nandawiya said earlier this month.