Billease buys rural bank to expand into digital banking

Consumer financing firm Billease, known as a buy now, pay later platform, has acquired a rural bank as part of its expansion strategy to integrate regulated digital banking into its ecosystem.

At a press briefing in Makati City, Billease executives, led by its co-founder and CEO George Steiger, announced the company’s acquisition of the Rural Bank of Sta. Maria-Ilocos Sur (RBSM) and appointed veteran rural banker Dennis Valdes as the bank’s president and CEO.

Valdes said Billease’s acquisition of RBSM was meant to expand the platform’s current consumer financing services to provide banking services such as deposit accounts.

“We can bring in new customers because there are also customers who will join [the platform] because of banking services, like deposits,” he said.

The appointed CEO of RBSM said Billease will integrate the rural bank’s regulated license into its ecosystem to support its expansion from being a credit-only or buy now, pay later-focused platform into supporting further financial services needs of its customers by offering savings or deposit accounts services.

Valdes said all of RBSM’s banking services will be available within the Billease app next year.

Billease, launched in 2017 has since served 10 million customers and disbursed over P100 million in loans, is embarking on a digital-centric banking expansion initiative through its acquisition of RBSM.

“We are now in the process of completely transforming our core systems to get ready for digital-centric banking, with plans to launch our new suite of banking products next year,” Valdes said.

Billease head of POS product Kurt Molina added that the platform is also actively preparing to support Google Pay to allow its users to tap-to-pay securely using their Android devices. –NB, GMA Integrated News