One in three Singaporean business owners still rely on personal bank accounts for their company's banking needs, seeking to avoid high transaction fees, according to a survey by MariBank, a digital bank owned by Southeast Asian technology firm Sea. This practice creates tax and legal complications, as business owners struggle to determine legitimate profits and deductions during tax season.

"Our local banks are good, and international banks also have a strong presence here," MariBank CEO Natalia Goh told Fortune. "But there are certain banking needs that are still underserved."

MariBank's proposed solution is a business account with zero transaction fees, paired with a single application that allows customers to switch between personal and business banking. "These needs are the white spaces that nobody's really addressing," Goh explained. "That's what makes it exciting, and that's where I think we have room to play."

The Origins of MariBank

MariBank launched in 2023 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Sea, Southeast Asia's largest technology company and No. 12 on the Fortune Southeast Asia 500. Sea, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, operates across online gaming (Garena), e-commerce (Shopee), and digital financial services (SeaMoney), giving it a broad footprint across consumer and merchant digital activity in the region. Goh assumed the role of CEO in 2024, succeeding the bank's inaugural head, Zheng Yudong.

Goh characterizes MariBank as a "natural extension" of Sea's existing offerings on e-commerce platform Shopee and financial payments platform Monee, which she says sit "at the heart" of users' digital lives. "Sea's existing businesses give it insights and a good understanding of what consumers do online," Goh said. "Banking was the obvious next piece of the puzzle."

MariBank is one of five Singaporean digital banks established following a 2019 regulatory ruling that authorized the Monetary Authority of Singapore to issue standalone digital banking licenses. A digital bank is a financial institution that operates entirely online through mobile applications and websites, without physical brick-and-mortar branches. Other Singaporean digital banks include Trust Bank, a collaboration between Standard Chartered and supermarket chain FairPrice Group, and GXS Bank, a partnership between telecommunications company Singtel and super app Grab.

Asia's first digital banks emerged in Hong Kong, mainland China, and South Korea, with Southeast Asia following shortly after. "In ASEAN, especially, digital banking licenses encourage greater participation and innovation in the banking sector, and make banking services more accessible to the masses," Goh said.

Path to Profitability

The promise of digital banking, however, has yet to be fully realized. Among Singapore's retail-focused digital banks, only Trust Bank has achieved profitability, posting its first profitable month in March.

In 2025, MariBank Singapore reported a loss of 55.6 million Singapore dollars ($43.4 million), exceeding the 51.3 million Singapore dollar loss recorded the previous year. Fellow digital bank GXS posted a 208 million Singapore dollar loss last year, a slight improvement from its 214 million Singapore dollar loss in 2024.

Each digital bank faces a limited window to prove its viability. As part of the licensing process, applicants were required to demonstrate a credible path to profitability within five years of launch. MariBank, which launched in 2023, accordingly has a three-year runway remaining. In January, parent company Sea injected 75 million Singapore dollars ($58.6 million) into the bank to support its scaling efforts.

Both MariBank and GXS are now expanding into less-banked markets such as Malaysia and the Philippines. GXS is a lead shareholder in GXBank, Malaysia's first digital bank. MariBank entered the Philippines last year following Sea's acquisition of rural bank Banco Laguna. Last month, the Philippines' central bank upgraded MariBank's license from a rural bank to a full-fledged digital bank.

The Philippines has become an increasingly competitive digital banking market. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has issued digital bank licenses to several players, including Maya Bank, backed by PLDT and Globe's joint venture Voyager Innovations, and UnionDigital, the digital arm of Union Bank of the Philippines. These entrants are pursuing the same unbanked and underbanked populations that MariBank is targeting.

The share of Filipinos with bank accounts surged from 29% in 2019 to 56% in 2021 during the pandemic, according to the Philippine Information Agency.

"The idea is, with the product knowledge that we build up in Singapore, we can bring it across and deploy that in the Philippines," Goh said. "We can localize it to the Filipino market, by lowering ticket sizes and changing the features a little."

Adapting to the Philippine Market

Unlike in Singapore, MariBank has had to adapt to a Philippine market that still relies heavily on physical cash. According to Worldpay's 2026 Global Payments Report, cash accounts for 42% of point-of-sale payments in the Philippines, despite the growing popularity of e-wallets such as GCash. As a result, MariBank is piloting cash-in and cash-out partnerships with local retail outlets, a feature not required in Singapore.

"Singapore is very much moving towards being cashless, and the Philippines is also heading in that direction, but there's still quite a need for cash," Goh explained.

Goh acknowledged that MariBank is still in a "growth stage" in the Philippines, noting that the bank has not yet introduced investment and overseas remittance products. The Philippines is one of the world's largest recipients of overseas remittances, with inflows exceeding $30 billion annually, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas—a segment that represents a significant opportunity for digital banks once MariBank enters it. Nevertheless, she expressed confidence that MariBank Philippines can scale rapidly, citing Sea's existing presence in the country.

"Shoppers are already acquainted with the Shopee name," Goh said. "That becomes a natural point for us to introduce MariBank, since it's associated with a brand that they already know." Goh declined to disclose specific user numbers in the Philippines but stated the bank is on a "really good growth trajectory."

MariBank is also leveraging Sea's proprietary data to underwrite loans in a market with limited formal credit history. "The Philippines' credit bureau data is not as strong or robust, given that a lot of the population there may not have an existing credit product," Goh said. "So we use quite a bit of data from Shopee to help us judge creditworthiness."

Goh envisions the Philippines as the first step toward building a regional digital banking group headquartered in Singapore. "Singapore is a sophisticated banking market, so it'll be our hub for innovation, talent, and strategy," she said, adding that MariBank remains "open" to further expansion, though she declined to identify specific target markets.

For Goh, the overarching goal is clear: to make banking simple, reliable, and rewarding. "No matter how much we expand, we will always stay true to these values," she concluded. "They'll continue being reflected in our product designs and the propositions that we roll out."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.