The aim of this partnership is to promote digital prepaid card targeted at Southeast Asia’s 430 million unbanked and underserved population. Razer, the Singapore-based company best known for its gaming laptops and peripherals, announced a partnership with Visa to develop a Visa prepaid solution.
The service, which allows unbanked users to top up and cash out easily, will be available as a mini program embedded in Razer Pay, the gaming company’s mobile payments app. That means Razer’s 60 million registered users will be able to pay at any of the 54 million merchant locations around the world that take Visa.
This partnership will benefit both the companies mutually in the coming years. The companies were aiming to go virtual considering the fast-growing digital population, however, both the companies will continue to serve physical prepaid card down the road.
Razer has been listed in the Hong Kong market for quite a long time, recently it has doubled down on fintech and it proved to be more than a hardware company. Payment services are considered to be unavoidable development for Razer whose users in the region are used to buy in-game credits at convenience stores.
Digital payments have become a necessity in the present world, the growing digitization, increasing number of online gamers and adoption of cloud services will further propel the growth from this partnership. The gamers who go to a 7-Eleven, pay in cash, and get a pin code to buy virtual skins for the games,”
Customers paying at Visa merchants don’t have to already own a bank account which will boost the Razer’s prepaid service since owning a bank account is the prerequisite for other e-wallet services. As a result, this partnership is expected to cater opportunity available through the unbanked and underserved population into the financial system. According to Razer co-founder and CEO Min-Liang Tan, Razer Fintech is a core growth initiative for the company to boost digital payments across emerging economies, specifically the Southeast Asian region. The prepaid solution will also cater on Razer Pay’s existing offerings such as everyday essentials such as mobile top-ups, leading virtual credits, and entertainment purchases for music and streaming services. Furthermore, the company has also made alliance with partners to add offerings such as ride-hailing, movie ticketing, and utility payments in streamlined mini-applications.
