Seven Bank establishes group company in Malaysia

Seven Bank has established a local corporation in Malaysia, which is its fourth international operating base following the U.S., Indonesia, and the Philippines.

The new entity will have four shareholders:

• Seven Bank — 50.1%
• 7-ELEVEN SERVICES — 24.9% — a Malaysian company that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of 7-ELEVEN MALAYSIA, which is the largest operator of “7-Eleven” 24-hour convenience stores in Malaysia and has over 2,500 stores throughout the country; it is an affiliate of Berjaya Corporation Berhad, a conglomerate company in Malaysia
• HQZ CREDIT — 20% — a Malaysian company principally engaged in investment holdings, money lending, and factoring activities
• SMRT — 5% — a Malaysian investment holding company listed on the ACE market of Bursa Malaysia

Background

Malaysia is currently showing GDP growth at 3.7%, and its demographic dividend period is forecast to continue until 2050 with a large proportion of younger generations, just like Indonesia and the Philippines. In addition, given that the amount of cash in circulation has increased every year, Seven Bank regards the country as one of the promising Asian markets.

Particularly, as for lifestyle habits in Malaysia, the proportion of people who pay in cash on a daily basis exceeds 70%, with the average number of withdrawals using ATMs being high compared with Japan and other Asian countries. In addition, while the total number of ATMs currently stands at around 15,000 or so throughout the nation, the number of ATMs per 1 million population amounts to 446. For these reasons, Seven Bank has judged that growth potential is expected in the ATM business in this country.

Group Business in Malaysia

The Group Company, based in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, will proceed with the placement of banknote-recycling-type ATMs mainly in regions where there are fewer bank branches and existing ATMs, and will operate ATMs by utilizing know-how that Seven Bank has accumulated to date. As there are few ATMs placed within convenience stores in the locality, Seven&I Group will aim to intertwine finance and retail services by providing new financial services through convenience store ATMs by sequentially installing ATMs in 7-Eleven stores, which have been familiar to the people for around 40 years as an icon of convenience stores in Malaysia.

Please follow us to read more about Finance & FinTech in Japan, like hundreds of readers do every day. We invite you to also register for our short weekly digest, the “Japan FinTech Observer”, on Medium or on LinkedIn. Our global Finance & FinTech Podcast, “eXponential Finance” is also available through its own LinkedIn newsletter, or via our Podcast Page.

Should you live in Tokyo, or just pass through, please also join our meetup. In any case, our YouTube channel and LinkedIn page are there for you as well.