UPDATE 1-Russian lender TCS picks payments firm BPC for Philippines expansion

Updates TCS customer numbers, adds detail on banking licences

MOSCOW, Feb 17 (Reuters) – TCS Group Holding TCSq.L, which runs Russia’s largest online bank, Tinkoff, will partner with payment solutions provider BPC in the Philippines as it pushes ahead with expansion into Asian markets, the two companies said on Thursday.

Tinkoff, which has more than 20 million customers as of mid-February, has earmarked up to $200 million for its South East Asia expansion drive. In November, the bank said it was in dialogue with regulators in three countries. nL8N2RZ4AA

Tinkoff hopes BPC’s more than 15 years of experience in the Philippines and its own technological offering will help it succeed, George Chesakov, international expansion lead at Tinkoff, said in a statement.

JP Morgan analysts consider Tinkoff’s Asia push a smart and well-balanced move.

“The Philippines is an attractive market with a large, digitally native, and financially underserved population,” analysts said in a note in September, describing the market as ripe for digital disruption.

“The central bank has recently been granting new banking licences to foster healthy competition and improve financial accessibility and inclusion,” the two companies said.

BPC, headquartered in Switzerland, said Tinkoff would use its software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud payment services for the planned expansion, with its processing company Radar Payments managing the end-to-end payment experience for prospective Tinkoff customers in the Philippines.

Evgenia Loginova, CEO at Radar Payments by BPC, said: “Success depends on the speed of deployment of new services in the digital banking industry, especially in the Philippines market, which will welcome a number of new market players in 2022.”

(Reporting by Alexander Marrow; editing by Jason Neely)

((alexander.marrow@thomsonreuters.com;))