Jack Ma’s shadow looms large for banks across Southeast Asia

SINGAPORE/SHANGHAI (June 30): Over the past two months, some 1,000 part-time workers for DBS Group Holdings Ltd. have fanned out across Singapore’s famed food courts, trying to entice mom-and-pop hawkers to use the bank’s digital payments service, called PayLah!

“Hawkers need speed, and they are afraid that using PayLah! may not be fast enough when the queues are very, very long,” 19-year-old Erica Chiang, who has signed up 50 food vendors in her seven weeks working for DBS, said on a sweltering Wednesday afternoon. “Once they know the product, they become interested."

Chiang is on the front lines of a push consuming banks across Southeast Asia these days: defending against Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and its payments affiliate Ant Financial, which are targeting the region as a major growth market.

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