Last week, Shopee parent Sea Group rebranded its digital financial services arm SeaMoney as Monee. The group CEO Forrest Li said the name “Monee” was “simple & cute”.
- Alongside the new name, Sea Group also unveiled the new headquarters of Monee – covering 10 floors of an office building called Rochester Commons. The new Monee HQ has a floor area of 200,000 square feet for 1000 employees. That’s about 20 square metres per employee – not bad. The group mentioned that the capacity of the campus is 1500. A few weeks ago, we could already see, outside the window of Momentum Works office, the Maribank (the digital bank subsidiary of Monee) logo hoisted from the building:
The map below shows how Southeast Asia’s regional tech giants – Sea Group (along with subsidiaries Shopee and Monee), and Grab – are all headquartered within a 2-km radius in Singapore’s west:
Sea Group has also made a remarkable recovery from the dramatic market and share price turbulence in 2022 and 2023: 
In 2022, the group was reportedly considering giving up the Rochester Commons office, which it had signed a 7 year lease in 2021. With Monee moving to the site, Sea Group will probably keep it for a much longer term.
As a business, Monee, referred to as “Digital Financial Services” in Sea Group’s financial reports, is doing well. It now covers payment, financing/lending, insurance as well as three digital banks. The segment reported an adjusted EBITDA of US$712.2 million for 2024.The lending business is undoubtedly the largest profit contributor. At the end of 2024, its (largely consumer) lending business reported a loan book of US$5.1 billion – close to 2/3 growth from a year ago. The non-performing loan ratio (past due by more than 90 days) is kept at an impressive 1.2%. 
The lending business leverages Shopee’s large customer base and rich ecommerce data, but also contributes to Shopee’s GMV by making it easier to purchase (e.g. large items with buy-now-pay-later). Of course, Monee is already a sizable business, which means explosive growth will become harder and harder. That said, it still has at least good upsides in the following areas: ShopeePay, lending beyond the Shopee platform (and Shopee operating countries), digital insurance, and digital banking.
These upsides can come in the forms of deeper penetration, more efficient operations, and certain new business areas. While there is a lot of reference from China’s Ant Group, some of Monee’s challenges are probably very distinct.
The post SeaGroup rebrands its digital financial services business first appeared on The Low Down - Momentum Works.
