Indonesian Fintech Unicorn Kredivo Reportedly Acquires Vietnam's First Digital Bank Timo

Vietnam's first digital bank may have a new owner.

According to a report first published by TechInAsia, Indonesian fintech unicorn Kredivo Group has completed a 100% acquisition of Timo. The legal paperwork has reportedly been signed, but the deal value was not disclosed. Neither party has officially confirmed the transaction.

If the reports are accurate, Kredivo plans to invest about USD 15 million in Vietnam over the next three years, merging consumer lending and digital banking into a single platform.

What Does Timo Do?

Timo was founded in 2015 by Don Lam, the co-founder and CEO of Vietnamese asset management firm VinaCapital. The name is a portmanteau of "time" and "money," and it was Vietnam's first purely digital banking brand.

Timo offers payments, savings, investments, insurance and instalment loans. Its core users are young urban professionals in Vietnam's major cities. In 2022, Timo raised USD 20 million in a round led by Australian VC firm Square Peg, with Jungle Ventures and Phoenix Holdings (founded by Henry Nguyen) also participating.

Timo currently operates through a partnership with BVBank (formerly Viet Capital Bank), using BVBank's banking license. This "tech company plus licensed bank" model is the only way digital banks can legally operate in Vietnam, which has not yet issued standalone digital banking licenses.

According to Vietnamese media reports, Timo has struggled in recent years to scale its lending business, with growth falling short of expectations.

What Does Kredivo Do?

Kredivo is one of Indonesia's largest buy now, pay later (BNPL) platforms. It launched in 2016, and its parent company Kredivo Holdings has raised over USD 660 million at a valuation of about USD 1.6 billion. Backers include Japan's Mizuho Financial Group, Square Peg and Jungle Ventures.

Kredivo's core business is consumer credit. When users shop on e-commerce platforms, they can choose to pay in instalments, with Kredivo handling instant credit scoring and risk assessment. In Indonesia, Kredivo is already integrated into Tokopedia, Shopee and Bukalapak.

In August 2021, Kredivo entered Vietnam through a joint venture with Phoenix Holdings, partnering with local finance company VietCredit to offer BNPL services. Vietnam was Kredivo's first market outside Indonesia.

Kredivo has been busy lately. In December 2025, it secured over USD 100 million in financing from Japan's Mizuho Bank. In February 2025, it acquired Indonesian earned wage access startup GajiGesa. Combined with the reported Timo deal, Kredivo is expanding rapidly through back-to-back acquisitions.

Why Acquire Timo?

Kredivo has been running BNPL in Vietnam for nearly five years, but BNPL is only a small piece of the financial services puzzle. With Timo, Kredivo can plug its lending technology into a full digital banking platform, upgrading from "instalment payments only" to a one-stop financial service.

The integration will happen in two phases. First, Kredivo will migrate its credit technology into Timo's system. Then it will roll out card-based payment products. The Timo brand will stay, and Kredivo's Vietnam operations will gradually consolidate under it, managed by Kredivo co-founder and CEO Akshay Garg.

Phoenix Holdings is both an early investor in Timo and Kredivo's joint venture partner when it entered Vietnam in 2021. That existing relationship likely served as a bridge for this deal.

Vietnam's financial environment gives Kredivo plenty of room to grow. Credit card penetration is very low, meaning the vast majority of consumers have no traditional credit tools. At the same time, smartphone penetration is high and the mobile payments market is projected to exceed USD 50 billion in 2026. Consumers are used to handling money on their phones, but traditional banks have been slow to keep up. That gap is exactly what Kredivo wants to fill.

Vietnam's Digital Banking Competition

Timo may have been first, but competition has heated up in recent years.

MoMo has evolved from an e-wallet into a super app offering everything from bill payments and investments to stock trading, and is the leader in Vietnam's e-wallet market. ZaloPay is expanding fast in payments, backed by the massive user base of Zalo, Vietnam's dominant messaging app. VNPay leads the QR code payment market.

These players all started with payments and expanded into other financial services. Kredivo's acquisition of Timo takes the opposite route: starting from credit and expanding into payments and savings through a banking platform.

In July 2025, Vietnam also launched a fintech regulatory sandbox (Decree No. 94), allowing innovative financial services to be tested in a controlled environment. For foreign fintech companies like Kredivo, this is a policy tailwind.

Southeast Asia's Fintech Consolidation

Over the past few years, fintech startups have popped up across the region, but most are still burning cash to acquire users. As markets mature and funding tightens, cross-border acquisitions become a shortcut to users and licenses.

Kredivo picked Vietnam for a few reasons: a population approaching 100 million, a young demographic, extremely low credit card penetration and rapidly growing mobile payments. These conditions make Vietnam one of Southeast Asia's most contested fintech battlegrounds.