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Kenanga Bank and Ant Group partner up to revolutionise the digital investment management in Malaysia

The upcoming 'super app' is set to house a variety of financial services under one roof as crypto adoption in the country grows

By Shashank Bhardwaj

Published: Aug 25, 2022 01:37:36 PM IST

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Malaysia is growing its crypto adoption as one of the major local banks, Kenanga Investment Bank Berhad, takes on crypto trading as one of its default banking offerings.

Kenanga is one of the largest private investment banks and boasts approximately 500,000 customers. A new crypto-friend wallet and trading application have been unveiled as part of its new venture in partnership with China’s tech giant, Ant Group.

Kenaga has reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding with Ant, under which Ant’s digital technology unit will provide Kenanga with mPaaS, a mobile development platform originating from AliPay App to aid in the development of their new ‘super application’.

Ant’s digital tech president Geoff Jiang commented, “Adopted by many businesses to build new apps and optimize the performance of existing apps, our financial-grade mPaaS mobile development platform is well-positioned to support Kenanga in integrating a wide range of products and services into its SuperApp.”

The promising super app aims to revolutionise wealth management in Malaysia through integrating financial services like stock trading, digital investment management, crypto trading, foreign currency exchange and more into a single application. The app is allegedly set to launch in early 2023.

The bank seems to be looking forward to this new venture, with the managing director of Kenanga Group, Datuk Chay Wai Leong, saying, “We look forward to not only unifying a broad spectrum of financial offerings under one roof, but more importantly, to make wealth creation more accessible by democratizing financial services for the millions of Malaysians.”

This is, however, not Kenanaga’s first stint in digital financial services since they have been an active player in the Malaysian crypto sphere since five years ago and even investing in local crypto exchange operators like Tokenize Technology in 2021. Moreover, their known partnership with Japanese crypto-friendly retail firm Rakuten further cements their positive outlook towards rising crypto adoption.

The Malaysian crypto industry has seen quite a few headlines over the last couple of months. Local officials had called for the government to legalize crypto in March, and, while investing and trading in crypto is legal in the region, the government is still opposing the idea of adopting crypto as a legal tender, which is undeniably a huge step in crypto adoption for any country.

The writer is the founder at yMedia. He ventured into crypto in 2013 and is an ETH maximalist. Twitter: @bhardwajshash