What if a magazine subscription—say, to Fortune—helped you get a loan?
Tanyapong Thamavaranukupt, co-president of Thai fintech Ascend Money, sees spending patterns—like magazine subscriptions or mobile bills—as a signal of creditworthiness, particularly in markets like Southeast Asia which have both a large underbanked population and underdeveloped financial institutions.
“We don’t rely on traditional data to make our loan decisions,” he told Fortune. Instead, Ascend Money’s lending service, Ascend Nano, relies on data from the company’s digital wallet, a service used to store and transact money, and make payments. “We can see what types of transactions users make, where they use their money, the type of phone they’re using,” he explains.
That can build a risk profile of a customer that doesn’t rely on traditional evidence, like financial statements, payslips, or a credit bureau assessment. Take a magazine subscription: Tanyapong suggests that a user who regularly reads a publication might be slightly more educated, and so may have a higher income–and so may be a safer person for Ascend to lend to.
Tanyapong reckons that about 20 million Thais, out of a larger population of 70 million, should be able to access a loan. Yet the country’s formal banks are only lending to about 5 million customers. That leaves around 15 million Thais who can’t get access to financing even though they may be creditworthy. “It’s not because they’re not qualified,” Tanyapong says. “It’s simply because the traditional players … use the exact same model that’s been there for the last 30 years.”
Micro- and small-sized businesses often don’t have financial statements, meaning they can’t convince banks to offer them a loan. Many traditional lenders also rely on credit bureaus, which don’t cover many underbanked people, again denying them access to financing.
If banks don’t step in, loan sharks will
Financial access is a regional problem. Around 225 million people in Southeast Asia lacked access to a formal bank account in 2021, according to calculations by the Center for Impact Investing and Practices. Around 350 million couldn’t get access to formal financing. Furthermore, the SME Finance Forum in 2018 calculated that more than half of the region’s SMEs couldn’t get access to financing.
Those that need money then turn to informal lenders, who can charge exorbitantly high interest rates. Tanyapong says Ascend Money’s nano loans can help get people out of the informal lending market, where loan sharks can charge as much as 20% interest per month. (Ascend Nano, by comparison, charges just 2%.)
Ascend isn’t the only company in Southeast Asia trawling customer data to build risk profiles. Grab, Southeast Asia’s most successful super-app, has tried to use data gleaned from its ride-hailing and GrabPay services to assess creditworthiness. Other regional platforms, like the Philippines’ GCash and Vietnam’s Momo, also use data collected from their digital wallets to help extend loans to users.
Ascend Money is the fintech arm for Thailand’s CP Group, a major conglomerate with interests in retail, agriculture, and manufacturing. Ascend started with payments and money transfer, but low margins pushed the company to expand to other financial services. Ascend Nano was one of the company’s first initiatives, providing “nano finance,” tiny loans that can be as little as $20, to consumers and small enterprises in Thailand.
Ascend Money’s work providing financing to Thailand’s unbanked and underbanked populations helped get the fintech company onto Fortune’s 2025 “Change the World” list, which recognizes businesses that do good through their business models.
Ascend Nano’s ties to the broader CP Group also help it find new customers. Tanyapong notes that many of their clients, particularly those that run small roadside stalls, buy their products wholesale from the broader conglomerate. “Based on their purchase history, we can give them a credit line to buy from CP Makro [the CP Group’s cash-and-carry wholesaler],” he explains, continuing that customers have managed to grow their business by up to two times their working capital.
Tanyapong spent 15 years in Thailand’s finance industry, including stints at GE Capital (Thailand) and KrungSri Ayudhya Bank. He then led retail banking at Krungthai Bank, one of the highest-ranked Thai companies on the Southeast Asia 500, at No. 57. He joined Ascend Money as its co-president in 2016.
Small-scale lending is a competitive market. The top 5% of services capture half the region’s users, according to a 2025 report from Bain, Temasek, and Google. The rest is served by a “long tail of smaller, aggressive apps” in markets with high demand for “fast credit.” Half of these services close within two years.
Ascend is also looking at other, “nano-” versions of financial services, including insurance and investing. “We often find our customers don’t even have insurance,” Tanyapong says. “We have more than ten million motorcycle drivers, and they’re always getting into accidents.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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