Grab agrees to buy 60% of Atome Financial for $1.49 billion, with a path to full ownership

Grab Holdings has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a controlling 60% stake in Atome Financial, a Singapore-based buy-now-pay-later provider, for $1.49 billion in cash, the companies said. The deal is expected to close by the third quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals.

Atome operates installment-payment services across multiple Southeast Asian markets, letting shoppers split purchases into interest-free installments at checkout — one of the region's more established BNPL networks. Folding it into Grab, whose app already spans ride-hailing, food delivery and digital payments across the region, gives Grab a consumer-lending product it can plug directly into transactions its super-app already handles.

The transaction is structured in two stages rather than a single outright purchase. Grab is buying 60% now; the companies said Grab has also agreed to acquire the remaining 40% roughly two years after this initial deal closes, at a valuation set by a performance-linked framework with a floor of $2 billion and a cap of $4.5 billion. That structure ties the eventual full-ownership price to how well Atome performs under Grab in the interim, rather than fixing the total deal value today.

Grab has described the acquisition as a way to scale its consumer lending and broader digital financial services business, which has grown alongside its core transportation and delivery operations in recent years. BNPL providers in Southeast Asia have faced growing regulatory attention over consumer debt accumulation in several of the region's markets, a backdrop that will shape how aggressively Grab can expand Atome's lending once the deal closes.

Neither company disclosed Atome's current transaction volumes or user base alongside the announcement, so the commercial scale being acquired is not yet quantified beyond the deal price itself.