Security Bank Corporation’s consumer finance arm, SB Finance Corporation (SBF), has partnered with Grab Philippines to offer personal loans to Grab users, driver-partners, and merchant-partners through Grab’s superapp.
Southeast Asia’s digital retail share grew 85% year-on-year, outpacing China (5%), Brazil (14%) and India (10%), according to the annual SYNC Southeast Asia report by Facebook and global consultancy Bain & Company. Over the next five years, Southeast Asia’s eCommerce sales is projected to keep pace with these countries, growing at 14% per year.
We have (mostly) good news about adtech today, Dear Reader. We’ll start with a nice acquisition: brand safety vendor DoubleVerify is expanding in the European market by buying Meetrics, a Berlin-based firm with somewhat similar offerings. Separately, DoubleVerify announced a partnership with Taboola, which will give Taboola’s advertisers more control over where their ads are placed.
There’s probably no limit to Amazon’s greed – because capitalism – but there are constraints as governments regulate BigTech more aggressively and, just maybe, the free market works its wonders. Amazon cited “seller sentiment related to the fee” in its statement pulling back from its planned 2% fee on sellers who don’t use its Prime fulfillment services. But looming antitrust cases likely had something to do with it.