Grab agreed on Sept. 15 to acquire a controlling 60% stake in Atome Financial for $1.49 billion in cash, its largest acquisition and a major expansion of the Southeast Asian super app’s consumer-lending business.
The proposed transaction covers Atome’s buy-now-pay-later loans, consumer cash loans, cards and digital-lending operations in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. It is expected to close by the third quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and customary conditions, according to Grab’s announcement.
A super app adds a lending network
Atome says it has served 25 million cumulative transacting users and more than 30,000 brands. Grab reported nearly 54 million monthly transacting users across its mobility, delivery and financial-services ecosystem. The transaction would put those distribution networks under common control while giving Grab a faster route into consumer credit than building a comparable platform from scratch.
Forbes reported that the purchase would more than double the combined consumer-loan portfolio by 2028. The first-stage price includes $260 million in primary growth capital for Atome. Grab also agreed to acquire the remaining 40% roughly two years after the initial closing under a performance-based valuation formula.
AI underwriting is part of the strategic case
Grab presented Atome’s AI-assisted underwriting infrastructure as a central asset. Connecting credit models with Grab’s transaction data could improve risk assessment, cross-selling and service costs. Those benefits remain projections, however, and the same expansion increases exposure to credit losses, fraud, privacy requirements and consumer-protection rules across five regulatory markets.
Channel NewsAsia independently confirmed the transaction and Grab’s target for its financial-services segment to reach $500 million in adjusted EBITDA and a combined gross loan portfolio above $6 billion by 2028. Those figures are company forecasts, not guaranteed results.
The execution window is unusually long
The structure gives regulators more than a year to review the first closing and ties the later purchase price to Atome’s performance. Grab said the second-stage equity valuation will have a $2 billion floor and a $4.5 billion cap, with at least half of that consideration paid in cash.
For executives, the deal is another sign that super apps see embedded finance as a growth engine, not simply a checkout feature. The test will be whether Grab can convert ecosystem reach into disciplined lending without allowing faster growth to outrun underwriting controls or customer trust.