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And if a subscription to a magazine, for example to Fortune-helped you get a loan?
Tanyapong Thamavaranukupt, co-chairman of Thai fintech Ascend Money, sees spending habits, such as magazine subscriptions or mobile phone 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 lending decisions,” he said. 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 are making, where they’re using their money, what type of phone they’re using,” he explains.
This can establish a client’s risk profile that is not based on traditional evidence, such as financial statements, pay stubs or a credit agency assessment. Get a magazine subscription: Tanyapong suggests that a user who regularly reads a publication might be slightly more educated and therefore might have a higher income – and therefore might be a safer person to lend to through Ascend.
Tanyapong estimates that around 20 million Thais, out of a larger population of 70 million, should be able to access a loan. Yet the country’s formal banks only lend to around 5 million customers. This leaves around 15 million Thais who cannot access financing even if they are creditworthy. “It’s not because they’re not qualified,” says Tanyapong. “It’s simply because the traditional players…are using the exact same model that’s been around for 30 years.”
Micro and small businesses often do not have financial statements, which means they are unable to 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 the banks don’t intervene, the loan sharks will
Financial access is a regional problem. Around 225 million people in Southeast Asia did not have access to a formal bank account in 2021, according to calculations by the Center for Impact Investing and Practices. Around 350 million people have been unable to access formal financing. Furthermore, the SME Finance Forum calculated in 2018 that more than half of SMEs in the region could not access financing.
Those in need of money then turn to informal lenders, who can charge exorbitant interest rates. Tanyapong says Ascend Money’s nanoloans can help people escape the informal loan market, where loan sharks can charge up to 20% interest per month. (Ascend Nano, by comparison, charges just 2%.)
Ascend is not the only company in Southeast Asia analyzing customer data to build risk profiles. Grab, Southeast Asia’s most successful super-app, has attempted to use data gleaned from its ride-hailing services and GrabPay to assess creditworthiness. Other regional platforms, like GCash in the Philippines and Momo in Vietnam, also use data collected from their digital wallets to help provide loans to users.
Ascend Money is the fintech arm of Thailand’s CP Group, a major conglomerate with interests in retail, agriculture and manufacturing. Ascend started with payments and money transfers, but low margins pushed the company to expand into other financial services. Ascend Nano was one of the company’s first initiatives, offering “nanofinancing,” small loans of up to $20, to consumers and small businesses in Thailand.
Ascend Money’s work in providing financing to Thailand’s unbanked and underbanked populations helped land the fintech company in the Fortune 2025 rankings.”Change the world» list, which rewards companies that do good through their economic models.
Ascend Nano’s ties to CP Group as a whole also help it find new customers. Tanyapong notes that many of their customers, especially those running small roadside stands, buy their products in bulk from the wider conglomerate. “Based on their purchasing history, we can grant them a line of credit to purchase from CP Makro. [the CP Group’s cash-and-carry wholesaler]”, he explains, adding that clients have successfully grown their business to twice their working capital.
Tanyapong spent 15 years in the Thai financial sector, including GE Capital (Thailand) and KrungSri Ayudhya Bank. He then headed retail banking at Krungthai Bankone of the highest-ranked Thai companies in the Southeast Asia 500, at 57th. He joined Ascend Money as co-president in 2016.
Small-scale lending is a competitive market. The richest 5% of services capture half of the region’s users, according to a 2025 report of Bain, Temasek and Google. The rest is served by a “long tail of smaller, aggressive apps” in markets where demand for “fast credit” is strong. Half of these services close within two years.
Ascend is also exploring other “nano” versions of financial services, including insurance and investing. “We often find that our clients don’t even have insurance,” says Tanyapong. “We have over ten million motorcycle drivers, and they always have accidents.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
