Companies like Optasia leverage mobile phone usage data from telecom partners to provide small loans to millions of unbanked individuals. This model of financial inclusion has created highly valuable "unicorn" companies on the continent.

By eliminating outdated constraints like the six-month activity rule and incorporating time-series data and alternative inputs like rent payments, modern credit scoring models can assess millions of creditworthy individuals, such as military personnel or young people, who were previously unscorable.

Grab provides financing to its drivers for items like smartphone upgrades. This is a strategic tool for supply-side retention, as drivers with loans stay on the platform 1.5x longer, work more, and double their earnings, deepening their dependency on Grab.

While financials are a small part of Grab's revenue, they are crucial for user retention. GrabPay users exhibit 1.5 times higher one-year retention rates than cash users and spend more across other services like rides and deliveries, reinforcing the entire super app ecosystem.

India's nationwide Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), like the UPI payments system, generates vast transactional data for populations previously outside the formal economy. An AI overlay on this data can assess creditworthiness for small vendors, solving a major barrier to financial inclusion and unlocking economic opportunity.

In the 80s, credit was binary: a high score got a card, a low score got nothing. Capital One pioneered an "information-based strategy," using data to test and price risk for consumers just below the traditional cutoff, effectively creating the modern data-driven lending model.

SeaMoney wasn't a planned business pillar. It was born out of necessity to solve payment challenges for its own gaming and e-commerce platforms in underbanked markets. This internal tool, which started with manual cash card distribution, evolved into a massive digital lending business.

With many "Buy Now, Pay Later" (BNPL) services not reporting to credit bureaus, lenders face "stacking" risk where consumers take on invisible debt. To get a holistic view, lenders are increasingly incorporating cash flow data, like checking account trends, into their underwriting processes.

Recognizing that standard maps like Google's failed in Southeast Asia's complex cities, Grab created its own mapping service. By attaching cameras to thousands of driver helmets, they crowdsourced data on informal alleys and shortcuts, building a proprietary, more efficient routing engine.