China’s ant group helps Malaysia launch crypto-friendly ‘super app’

Malaysia continues to accelerate the pace of cryptocurrency adoption as one of the major local banks moves to cryptocurrency trading as part of standard banking offerings.

Kenanga Investment Bank Berhad, one of the largest private investment banks with more than 500,000 customers, has partnered with China’s tech giant Ant Group to launch a crypto-friendly wallet and trading app.

According to an announcement on Wednesday, Kenanga has signed a memorandum of understanding with Ant to jointly develop Malaysia’s wealth application called categorized as a super app. Under the terms of the agreement, Ant’s digital technology unit will provide Kenanga mPaaS, a mobile development platform derived from the AliPay App.

“Adopted by many enterprises 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 SuperApp,” At’s digital technology president Geoff Jiang noted.

SuperApp is designed to revolutionize the way wealth is managed in Malaysia by integrating various financial services – such as stock trading, digital investment management, crypto trading, digital wallet, currency exchange and others – into a single platform. Kenanga is reportedly planning to launch the app in early 2023.

“We look forward to not only unifying a wide range of financial offerings under one roof, but more importantly, making value creation more accessible by democratizing financial services for millions of Malaysians,” said Kenanga Group CEO Datuk Chay Wai Leong.

He also mentioned that Kenanga started experimenting with digital financial services five years ago and the new application would bring the company’s growth to the next level. As previously reported, Kenanga has been an active player in the crypto industry, investing in local crypto exchange operators such as Tokenize Technology in 2021.

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Kenanga is also a known partner of Japanese crypto-friendly retail firm Rakuten, which offers Malaysia’s local online stock trading platform Rakuten Trade.

The cryptocurrency industry has seen some action in Malaysia in recent months, with local officials reportedly calling on the government to legalize crypto in March 2022. While crypto investing and trading has been legal in Malaysia, the government opposed the idea of ​​adopting crypto as legal tender .