Grab takes payments battle with Go-jek to Vietnam

Grab will invest $500 million into Vietnamese fintech over the next five years, the company announced on Wednesday, in a bid to counteract competitor advances in the region’s e-commerce market. 

This move is straight out of the Grab playbook. The ride-hailing platform has steadily unfurled operations across Southeast Asia since it launched in Singapore seven years ago.

Last month, Grab announced a $2 billion investment to digitise Indonesian government services in cooperation with venture capital group SoftBank. This follows the app’s Grab 4 Indonesia 2020 campaign which included a four-year plan to put $700 million into the nation’s economy.

In this battle...