{"id":884573,"date":"2026-01-13T06:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T12:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/13\/ascend-money-wants-to-finance-the-10-million-plus-thais-currently-being-ignored-by-traditional-banks-stuck-in-the-past\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T06:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T12:12:10","slug":"ascend-money-wants-to-finance-the-10-million-plus-thais-currently-being-ignored-by-traditional-banks-stuck-in-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/13\/ascend-money-wants-to-finance-the-10-million-plus-thais-currently-being-ignored-by-traditional-banks-stuck-in-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Ascend Money wants to finance the 10 million-plus Thais currently being ignored by traditional banks stuck in the past"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Tanyapong Thamavaranukupt, co-president of Thai fintech Ascend Money, sees spending patterns\u2014like magazine subscriptions or mobile bills\u2014as a signal of creditworthiness, particularly in markets like Southeast Asia which have both a large underbanked population and underdeveloped financial institutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t rely on traditional data to make our loan decisions,\u201d he told Fortune. <\/em>Instead, Ascend Money\u2019s lending service, Ascend Nano, relies on data from the company\u2019s digital wallet, a service used to store and transact money, and make payments. \u201cWe can see what types of transactions users make, where they use their money, the type of phone they\u2019re using,\u201d he explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That can build a risk profile of a customer that doesn\u2019t rely on traditional evidence, like financial statements, payslips, or a credit bureau assessment. Take a magazine subscription: Tanyapong suggests that a user who regularly reads a publication might be slightly more educated, and so may have a higher income\u2013and so may be a safer person for Ascend to lend to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tanyapong reckons that about 20 million Thais, out of a larger population of 70 million, should be able to access a loan. Yet the country\u2019s formal banks are only lending to about 5 million customers. That leaves around 15 million Thais who can\u2019t get access to financing even though they may be creditworthy. \u201cIt\u2019s not because they\u2019re not qualified,\u201d Tanyapong says. \u201cIt\u2019s simply because the traditional players \u2026 use the exact same model that\u2019s been there for the last 30 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Micro- and small-sized businesses often don\u2019t have financial statements, meaning they can\u2019t convince banks to offer them a loan. Many traditional lenders also rely on credit bureaus, which don\u2019t cover many underbanked people, again denying them access to financing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If banks don\u2019t step in, loan sharks will<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Financial access is a regional problem. Around 225 million people<\/a> in Southeast Asia lacked access to a formal bank account in 2021, according to calculations by the Center for Impact Investing and Practices. Around 350 million couldn\u2019t get access to formal financing. Furthermore, the SME Finance Forum in 2018 calculated that more than half of the region\u2019s SMEs couldn\u2019t get access to financing.<\/p>\n

Those that need money then turn to informal lenders, who can charge exorbitantly high interest rates. Tanyapong says Ascend Money\u2019s nano loans can help get people out of the informal lending market, where loan sharks can charge as much as 20% interest per month. (Ascend Nano, by comparison, charges just 2%.)<\/p>\n

Ascend isn\u2019t the only company in Southeast Asia trawling customer data to build risk profiles. Grab, Southeast Asia\u2019s most successful super-app, has tried to use data gleaned from its ride-hailing and GrabPay services to assess creditworthiness. Other regional platforms, like the Philippines\u2019 GCash and Vietnam\u2019s Momo, also use data collected from their digital wallets to help extend loans to users.<\/p>\n

Ascend Money is the fintech arm for Thailand\u2019s CP Group, a major conglomerate with interests in retail, agriculture, and manufacturing. Ascend started with payments and money transfer, but low margins pushed the company to expand to other financial services. Ascend Nano was one of the company\u2019s first initiatives, providing \u201cnano finance,\u201d tiny loans that can be as little as $20, to consumers and small enterprises in Thailand.<\/p>\n

Ascend Money\u2019s work providing financing to Thailand\u2019s unbanked and underbanked populations helped get the fintech company onto Fortune\u2019s 2025 \u201cChange the World<\/a>\u201d list, which recognizes businesses that do good through their business models<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ascend Nano\u2019s ties to the broader CP Group also help it find new customers. Tanyapong notes that many of their clients, particularly those that run small roadside stalls, buy their products wholesale from the broader conglomerate. \u201cBased on their purchase history, we can give them a credit line to buy from CP Makro [the CP Group\u2019s cash-and-carry wholesaler],\u201d he explains, continuing that customers have managed to grow their business by up to two times their working capital.<\/p>\n

Tanyapong spent 15 years in Thailand\u2019s finance industry, including stints at GE Capital (Thailand) and KrungSri Ayudhya Bank. He then led retail banking at Krungthai Bank<\/a>, one of the highest-ranked Thai companies on the Southeast Asia 500, at No. 57. He joined Ascend Money as its co-president in 2016.<\/p>\n

Small-scale lending is a competitive market. The top 5% of services capture half the region\u2019s users, according to a 2025 report<\/a> from Bain, Temasek, and Google<\/a>. The rest is served by a \u201clong tail of smaller, aggressive apps\u201d in markets with high demand for \u201cfast credit.\u201d Half of these services close within two years.<\/p>\n

Ascend is also looking at other, \u201cnano-\u201d versions of financial services, including insurance and investing. \u201cWe often find our customers don\u2019t even have insurance,\u201d Tanyapong says. \u201cWe have more than ten million motorcycle drivers, and they\u2019re always getting into accidents.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Nicholas Gordon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tanyapong Thamavaranukupt, co-president of Thai fintech Ascend Money, sees spending patterns\u2014like magazine subscriptions or mobile bills\u2014as a signal of creditworthiness, particularly in markets like Southeast Asia which have both a large underbanked population and underdeveloped financial institutions. \u201cWe don\u2019t rely on traditional data to make our loan decisions,\u201d he told Fortune. Instead, Ascend Money\u2019s lending<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":884574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[134041,1410],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-884573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ascend","8":"category-money"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}