Southeast Asian superapp Grab has agreed to acquire a 60% stake in Atome Financial for $1.49 billion in cash, confirming DealStreetAsia’s report in June that the Nasdaq-listed company was in talks to invest in the consumer lender.
The transaction gives Grab control of Atome Financial and sets out a path for the superapp to acquire the remaining 40% roughly two years after the first leg of the deal closes.
Under the definitive agreements announced on Tuesday, $260 million of the $1.49-billion consideration will be injected into Atome Financial as primary growth capital.
The transaction is expected to close by the third quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
Following the deal, Grab will consolidate Atome Financial into its financial services segment, while the fintech’s existing management team will continue to run the business.
Atome Financial is the digital financial services arm of Advance Intelligence Group Limited (AIGL), which is led by chairman and CEO Jefferson Chen.
The company operates across Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, offering BNPL, consumer cash loans, BNPL cards and other digital lending products.
It has served 25 million cumulative transacted users and built a gross loan portfolio of about $1 billion. Its merchant network spans more than 30,000 brands.
Path to full ownership
Grab has separately agreed with AIGL and other shareholders to acquire the remaining 40% of Atome Financial approximately two years after the first transaction is completed.
The price of that second leg has not been fixed and will be calculated using Atome Financial’s performance in the six months preceding the second closing.
Under the agreed formula, Atome will be valued using a 13x multiple of annualised adjusted EBITDA and a 2.5x multiple of annualised revenue, weighted at 75% and 25%, respectively.
The resulting equity valuation will have a floor of $2 billion and a cap of $4.5 billion.
At least half of the consideration for the remaining stake will be paid in cash.
Betting bigger on lending
Fintech, one of Grab’s three main business verticals, remains the only loss-making unit among the three. In the second quarter of 2026, mobility recorded $191 million in segment adjusted EBITDA, while deliveries contributed $96 million. Financial services, by contrast, remained $15 million in the red.
In April, Grab president and chief operating officer Alex Hungate told DealStreetAsia the company was in the early stages of exploring an expansion of its financial services business beyond its own ecosystem, including into BNPL.
The companies said the combination would bring together Atome Financial’s AI-based underwriting infrastructure and Grab’s ecosystem data while giving Atome access to Grab’s nearly 54 million monthly transacting users.
Atome, meanwhile, brings a large consumer base and merchant network that Grab could potentially cross-sell other financial and ecosystem products into.
“Atome Financial’s leading use of AI to underwrite digital lending to millions of users across the region, while managing risk effectively, will help to scale and strengthen Grab’s whole ecosystem,” Hungate said.
Raising 2028 targets
Grab expects its fintech arm, including Atome Financial, to generate $500 million in adjusted EBITDA by 2028, with a combined gross loan portfolio exceeding $6 billion.
Grab is funding the initial acquisition entirely from its existing cash and expects the transaction to be accretive to group adjusted EBITDA upon completion.
It now expects group adjusted EBITDA to reach $1.7 billion in 2028, while revenue is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 30% between 2025 and 2028.
“Atome Financial gives us a proven consumer lending operator and an established merchant base, letting us scale our financial services segment significantly faster and more cost-efficiently than building it ourselves,” Grab chief financial officer Peter Oey said.
Atome Financial posted revenue of $470 million in 2025, up about 80% year on year, and delivered its second consecutive year of pre-tax profit.
The company has also been expanding its funding base as its loan book grows.
In July, its Philippine unit secured a 5-billion-peso ($81 million) wholesale funding facility from Asia United Bank to finance the expansion of its PayLater Anywhere Card.
