Ascend Nano is the lending arm of Ascend Money, a regional fintech powerhouse and Thailand’s first fintech unicorn.

Founded in 2017, the company utilises advanced technology and data-driven insights to provide flexible, tailored financial solutions to underserved consumers and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), including street vendors, freelancers, and students who lack traditional credit scores.

As part of the Ascend Group, they are dedicated to accelerating the provision of inclusive financial services across Southeast Asia.

Despite a population of 70 million, Thailand’s traditional banks only serve around 5 million customers. Ascend Nano identified a clear gap in the market: an estimated 15 million creditworthy people were excluded from formal lending simply because they lacked payslips.

Locked out of the banking system, many turned to informal lenders charging interest rates of up to 20% per month.

As demand for fair, digital credit surged, Ascend Nano’s growth exposed a major limitation—its existing Loan Management System (LMS) could not scale fast enough to meet the needs of the Thai market. To serve the unbanked effectively, Ascend Nano wanted to introduce new distinct digital loan products. That required a modern core banking platform capable of handling high transaction volumes while staying flexible enough to keep pace with Thailand’s evolving digital lending and regulatory requirements.

Ascend Nano selected Mambu’s cloud-native banking platform in late 2020 to power its digital transformation and went live in just five months, well ahead of typical industry benchmarks for lending system deployments, which often take nine months to over a year.

By leveraging Mambu’s composable architecture, Ascend Nano successfully launched its new digital lending and credit line offerings, Pay Next and Pay Next Extra. As a digital-native platform, Ascend Nano is able to deliver fully digital, end-to-end lending journeys, significantly lowering the cost to serve and expanding access to credit for underserved users.

This enabled the team to deliver seamless, digital-first experiences while scaling at speed. Mambu provided the scalability required to support rapid growth of active accounts and the flexibility to configure products "as code," ensuring Ascend Nano could move faster than its competition.

A key factor in this success was the ease of implementation. Mambu’s architecture enabled seamless integration with Ascend Nano’s existing systems, built primarily on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure, which allowed for smooth data flow without heavy custom development.

As a tech-driven organisation, Ascend Nano was able to own the implementation directly, without relying on external system integrators. This resulted in full control over product features and configuration, accelerating their ability to iterate and enhance loan offerings rapidly. Over the course of the first year, Ascend Nano incrementally improved and expanded the platform, evolving it into a fully digital, end-to-end lending solution.

This foundation now serves as a core capability the company plans to leverage as part of its broader strategy with Ascend Money.

Mambu’s support team also played a critical role during the implementation and beyond. With 24/7 availability and direct involvement from their leadership team when needed, Ascend Nano was able to maintain service continuity, ensuring a seamless experience for end users.

Having full control over the platform has allowed Ascend Nano to move with agility, continuously innovating for financial inclusivity and quickly adapting to the changing needs of its customers.

Since partnering with Mambu, Ascend Nano has seen strong and sustained growth, with a 77% increase in its loan portfolio, while scaling digital lending to millions of users and expanding access across underserved segments in Thailand.

As Ascend Money progresses toward launching a virtual bank, Mambu’s high-performance platform remains a strategic foundation powering its financial services ecosystem through Ascend Nano, enabling accessible, life-changing financial products for millions across Thailand.