ATOME

Atome was born inside Advance Intelligence Group, a Singapore tech company co-founded in 2016 by Jefferson Chen, a former hedge fund manager. The group started in data science and credit scoring, helping banks and lenders spot good borrowers and block fraud.

Atome, launched in 2019, was the consumer-facing product built on top of that. The idea was to give shoppers instant, interest-free installments in markets where credit cards are rare.

Atome splits a purchase into three interest-free payments for the shopper. The merchant gets paid in full right away, minus a fee.

That merchant fee is the core revenue. Atome makes money because stores are happy to pay for bigger baskets and fewer abandoned carts.

The parent group also earns from its credit-scoring and lending technology sold to banks. So there are two engines.

The flashy consumer app and the quieter software behind it.

Atome is the main product, a three-installment pay-later button used at checkout online and in stores. There is also an Atome credit card, personal loans and savings products under Atome Financial.

Behind the consumer brand sits ADVANCE.AI, the group's identity-verification and fraud-prevention software used by banks and businesses across Asia.

Atome grew by signing up big-name retailers fast. It partnered with thousands of merchants across fashion, beauty, and lifestyle in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Being part of Advance Intelligence Group helped, because the group already had the credit-scoring muscle to underwrite new users quickly. It leaned on brand partnerships and a clean checkout experience rather than heavy discounting.

Pay-later is easy to launch and hard to make profitable. Atome lends to young shoppers, many with thin credit histories, so bad debt is a constant worry.

The global pay-later boom cooled hard after 2021, and investors turned cautious on the whole model. Regulators across Southeast Asia have also started writing rules for pay-later, which raises costs.

Atome responded by cutting back on pure growth. It says operating income doubled to $170 million in 2023 and that it turned profitable in early 2024.

Keeping loan losses low as it pushes into cards and bigger loans is the next test.

The funding sits at the parent, Advance Intelligence Group. Vision Plus Capital led a $50 million Series B in 2018 and Gaorong Capital led an $80 million Series C in 2019.

The big one came in 2021, when SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Warburg Pincus co-led a $400 million Series D that valued the group at more than $2 billion. In May 2023, with pay-later out of fashion, Warburg Pincus and Indonesia's Northstar Group led a further $80 million.

The group has also lined up more than $1 billion of debt funding to finance the loans Atome makes.