LAST year marked a significant turning point for TNG Digital Sdn Bhd, the operator of Malaysia’s most widely used e-wallet. For the first time since the launch of TNG eWallet in March 2018, the company has derived half of its revenue from services beyond payments.

This was a major milestone for TNG Digital because non-payment services — which include financial services such as wealth management and insurance, and business-to-business (B2B) offerings — carry markedly better margins than the low-yield, high-volume payments business that first drove its growth.

That deliberate shift towards non-payment services helped deliver a solid financial turnaround for the company.

It made a profit after tax of RM103.23 million for the financial year ended Dec 31, 2025 (FY2025), reversing an after-tax loss of RM42.48 million the year before, according to its filings with the Companies Commission of Malaysia. This was achieved on revenue of RM707.28 million, which was 72% higher than the previous year’s RM411.92 million.

“Last year was the first time that we were profitable for the full year,” TNG Digital CEO Alan Ni tells The Edge in an exclusive interview. The company turned profitable in September 2024 and has remained in the black every month since, he adds.

TNG Digital now has a verified customer base of 26 million, all of whom have undergone electronic know-your-customer (eKYC) verification. Of these, 23 million are Malaysians — representing more than 85% of the country’s adult population, says Ni.

“We are, by far, the biggest [e-wallet operator] in terms of user base,” he continues.

Last year was also the first time payments — the core business or what Ni calls the “home base” of TNG Digital — managed to break even. This was “a huge achievement” given the enormous scale required to offset thin margins, he says. Payments made up the other half of its revenue last year.

“Payments give us very, very small margins. In fact, some payments, such as QR payment for SMEs (small and medium enterprises), are almost like a national service — we lose money on it and will probably continue to do so in the foreseeable future. But it’s a business we choose to do because it’s a very good user case. Payments keep us relevant and drive strong user engagement. So, this is our home base,” says Ni.

“But the cross-sell into financial services, B2B services and, to a large extent, cross-border payments, become increasingly important for us because these [businesses] have decent profit margins. This is where our profit is coming from.”

He is confident that profitability can be sustained as the company increasingly counts on contribution from its non-payment businesses.

“The non-payment businesses are really growing very fast. Take, for example, remittance — we started from zero three or four years ago, and now we’re doing a few hundred million transactions per month. And in cross-border payments, which really [took off] after Covid-19, we’re also doing a few hundred million [transactions] per month, and this is a relatively high-margin business,” he points out.

“In terms of revenue composition, our payments [business] is still growing, but its share of overall revenue is gradually declining. That said, I don’t think it will go down to, say, 10% or 20%. Payments will still remain quite a significant portion of our overall business because, ultimately, we cross-sell [our other businesses] through that space.”

“That cash-to-cashless conversion has not finished, and that’s what is actually fuelling this high growth in digital payments,” says Ni. Malaysia already ranks second in the world for QR code payment adoption behind China, he notes.

CIMB Group Holdings Bhd (KL:CIMB), the country’s second-largest banking group by assets, is TNG Digital’s biggest shareholder with a 45.01% stake. The stake is held through the bank’s wholly-owned unit, Touch ’n Go Sdn Bhd, which runs the toll and parking payments business.

TNG Digital’s other shareholders are Ant International Technologies (HK) Holding Ltd (34.62%), Lazadapay Holdings Pte Ltd (11.38%), ASP Malaysia LP (5.99%) and insurer AIA Bhd (3%).

Ant International Technologies is part of Ant Group, a Chinese fintech giant best known for operating Alipay, one of the world’s largest open platforms for payments and digital services. ASP Malaysia is held by New York-based investment firm Bow Wave Capital Management.

TNG Digital’s revenue has been expanding at a compound annual growth rate of about 70% over the past four years, says Ni. The company is targeting revenue of RM1 billion in FY2026, although Ni indicates that based on its current trajectory, it is likely to easily surpass that level.

Interestingly, toll and parking payments contribute only a low single-digit percentage to TNG Digital’s revenue, according to Ni. This may come as a surprise to those who still primarily associate the company with those businesses. Its shareholder, Touch ’n Go Sdn Bhd, is the one that operates the toll and parking business. It is understood that while the two companies undertake certain products together, such as TNG RFID and PayDirect, the revenue from those offerings accrues to Touch ’n Go Sdn Bhd, with TNG Digital receiving a fee-based portion.

“In the very early days, toll and parking made up a very big portion of our business. Now, they contribute only a low single-­digit percentage to our revenue, so you can imagine how much we have grown,” he explains.

Ni became TNG Digital’s leader in April 2022, having previously served as its chief operating officer since August 2018. “I was Employee No.3,” he recalls. Before joining the company, Ni held senior leadership roles at CIMB Group. He has over two decades of experience in consumer and commercial finance, as well as risk and fraud management.

When the company launched TNG eWallet in March 2018, it had a straightforward mission of converting users of the Touch ’n Go card — ubiquitous in tolls and parking — into digital wallet users. “For the first one or two years, we were very focused on that. At the time, toll-and-parking was still the majority of our business,” Ni recalls.

But the company quickly moved beyond its origins, first with QR payments, then online payments and, later, cross-border payments. By 2020, it had ventured into its next phase: financial services.

Its financial services now span wealth management, insurance, remittance and lending — all undertaken through partnerships. Its partners are CIMB Group, Alliance Bank Malaysia Bhd (KL:ABMB) and other financial institutions and companies.

TNG Digital’s lending business is still at an early stage and fairly small, accounting for just 3% to 4% of total revenue. “This is definitely an area that has room to grow,” says Ni.

Its partnership model is what sets it apart from incumbent banks and digital banks. Instead of taking deposits or lending off its own balance sheet, the company has built an open platform that connects its millions of users to its partners’ financial products.

In other words, it doesn’t need the underlying licences or expertise to roll out financial services — it just needs partners. This has allowed the company to grow rapidly without the capital or regulatory constraints typically faced by digital banks, says Ni.

“This is the beauty of our model. It’s our partners’ products, but we help them distribute the products on our platform and by doing so, we take a certain commission income. So, TNG Digital becomes a very big distribution platform. This is actually why we grow so fast, because we don’t need to build everything ourselves, we don’t need to apply for every single licence and we don’t need to build all the tech platforms one by one,” Ni states.

“I don’t take any deposits at all. The deposits, the funding, is theirs and so is the products’ balance sheet. I’m simply distribution,” he adds.

Ni, however, does not discount the possibility of pursuing certain businesses or licences on its own.

“We never say never. It really depends on customer needs. When you do other people’s products, there may be certain limitations as you’re only a distributor. So, if we feel there are products we can deliver much better on our own, then we may consider it,” he explains.

“There are areas we are exploring, but we don’t have any concrete plans at this stage — whether it’s applying for a licence or venturing into something else.”

On rivalry with digital banks and other lenders, Ni says: “When you understand our business model, you’ll realise I have more friends than competitors. If I’m not the best, I can work with the best — do you want to join me as a partner? So, I actually see most of my competitors not just as competitors but as [potential] partners.”

However, given the highly competitive landscape, not all rivals may see things the same way. Malaysia’s digital payments and financial services space is crowded, with more than 30 e-wallet players in operation. Banks, digital banks and fintech firms are all vying for a share of the same customer base.

If TNG Digital’s first phase was about building scale in payments, and the second — which is still ongoing — is about monetising that scale, then the third is about becoming something broader: what the company describes as an “everyday digital companion”.

“Beginning from the last two or three years, we’ve also really focused on lifestyle-related user cases,” says Ni. That ambition is evident in the app’s growing list of features. For example, users can now search for nearby restaurants, complete digital arrival cards for travel to several countries, or even rely on a feature that covers toll charges temporarily if their balance runs low — all without direct monetisation.

“So, we went from payments, to financial services and to [being] an almost all-in-one kind of super app, or digital companion,” he says.

Ni stops short of labelling the company a “super app” as it has a high bar for what can truly be called a super app.

“To be a super app, you don’t just need to have a very big user base, you also have to have a wide range of user cases. If we compare ourselves to WeChat Pay or Alipay or Meituan in China, we still have some gaps. Their ecosystem is much bigger. But in the Malaysian context, [among] the homegrown apps, I do feel we’re probably the one closest to super app status.”

What the company is aspiring towards is to become an “everyday digital companion” to its users. That means putting out the kind of products and services users want so that they only need to use one app for all their needs. “Once you’re using us for everything, every day, then of course we have some cross-sell opportunities,” he says.

Ni reveals that the company may launch a “family wallet” later this year where parents and their children can link their e-wallets. “We’ve also launched TNG Digital Singapore to serve Singaporeans, but usage will mainly be in Johor, cross-border,” he says.

Indeed, for TNG Digital, it is clear that its challenge over the next few years is not whether Malaysians will use its app, but how much more of their daily lives it can become a part of, even as its rivals strive to do the same.