YouTrip partners Visa to expand its footprint in Southeast Asia

YouTrip, a Singapore-based multicurrency mobile wallet has announced a six-year partnership with Visa to accelerate its expansion into the rest of Southeast Asia, starting with Malaysia and Philippines.

Currently launched in Singapore and Thailand, YouTrip has amassed over one million downloads to date. The announcement comes a year after YouTrip’s first regional expansion to Thailand in partnership with Kasikornbank, one of Thailand’s largest banks with over 13.9 million online banking customers as of November 2020.

The partnership with Visa will fuel YouTrip’s mission to bring the cross-border payment experience to the travellers in Southeast Asia.  Unlike regional travel in other parts of the world such as Europe or the United States of America, travelling within Southeast Asia requires multicurrency spending. Leveraging on Visa's global network of 70 million merchant locations worldwide, YouTrip aims to enable Southeast Asia travellers with access to cross border payment solutions such as wholesale exchange rates and no foreign currency transaction fees in over 150 currencies.

YouTrip looks to Malaysia and the Philippines as the next potential markets in the next six to 12 months. The two markets present massive untapped potential with outbound travel expenditure expected to reach USD 12.4 bln and USD 12.0 bln from Malaysia and Philippines respectively in 2021. Additionally, Malaysia and the Philippines are two of the fastest-growing Southeast Asian countries in mobile payment adoption, from 17% to 40% and 14% to 45% respectively. The partnership presents YouTrip the opportunity to bring its ‘Truly No Fees’ proposition to a growing group of digitally adept travellers.