Singapore’s Sea Weighs Separate Listing for Fintech Arm Monee, Launches Sea Cloud
Sea Ltd, the Singapore group behind Shopee, is weighing a separate stock market listing for Monee, its digital payments and lending arm. Founder and chief executive Forrest Li set out the idea in an internal memo to staff, alongside the launch of a new enterprise cloud business called Sea Cloud.
No exchange, timetable or valuation has been named, but the move would turn a fast-growing regional lender and wallet operator into a stand-alone listed fintech.
Key facts
- Forrest Li floated a Monee spin-off and listing in a memo marking the ninth anniversary of Sea’s New York Stock Exchange debut in October 2017.
- Monee, known as SeaMoney until its May 2025 rebrand, runs payments, consumer and SME lending and digital banking in eight markets: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Brazil.
- In the second quarter of 2026, Monee’s revenue rose 58.9% from a year earlier to US$1.4 billion, and adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) reached US$288 million.
- Its loan book grew 62.5% to US$11.1 billion at the end of June, with the 90-day non-performing loan ratio steady at 1%.
- The same memo announced Sea Cloud, which will sell cloud and AI services to businesses, putting Sea up against Amazon Web Services and Alibaba Cloud.
What Sea is planning
In the memo, Li wrote that Monee is getting close to the point where it “can stand on its own two feet”, and that going public could give the unit more resources and room to grow faster than it can as part of the group. Sea says it is only considering the step for now. It has not said where the shares would trade or when.
Monee has grown up inside Shopee. Many of its customers first use ShopeePay, the e-wallet, or SPayLater, Shopee’s buy now, pay later (BNPL) service, while checking out on the marketplace. The group also runs MariBank, a digital bank in Singapore. Around that core, Monee now lends to consumers and small businesses well beyond Shopee purchases.
The cloud plan comes from the same playbook. Sea spent about two years rebuilding its in-house cloud platform to run its own AI tools, and now wants to sell that capacity to other companies.
Why it matters
A listed Monee would be one of the clearest public tests of whether a fintech born inside an e-commerce app can stand alone. Investors would be able to value its lending and payments business separately from Shopee and Sea’s gaming arm, Garena.
It would also bring more scrutiny. A stand-alone Monee would have to report its credit quality, funding and dealings with Shopee on its own terms. Because Monee holds banking and lending licences in several countries, any restructuring is likely to need sign-off from multiple regulators, from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to central banks and financial watchdogs across the region.
The fast loan growth shows why the unit is attractive, and why risk managers will watch it closely. Lending has been growing faster than revenue, so the quality of new loans, especially those made outside the Shopee app, will shape how the market sees any listing.
There is a direct link for Malaysia. Monee is behind ShopeePay and SPayLater here, two of the most widely used wallet and BNPL brands, and it competes head-on with Touch ’n Go eWallet and GrabPay. A better-funded, separately listed Monee could push harder on savings, credit and merchant products for Malaysian users, all of which fall under Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) rules for e-money issuers and BNPL providers.
What to watch
- Whether Sea names an exchange, a timeline or advisers for a Monee listing, and how much of the unit it would keep.
- How regulators in Monee’s eight markets respond, especially where it holds bank or lending licences.
- Monee’s next quarterly figures, particularly loan growth and bad-loan ratios, in Sea’s third-quarter results.
Related: Malaysia’s e-wallet war explained · ShopeePay raises Money+ limit to RM30,000
Sources: Bloomberg via Yahoo News Singapore (October 2026) · Fintech News Singapore, citing Reuters (October 2026) · Sea Limited Q2 2026 results, Business Wire (August 2026) · Pulse 2.0 (August 2026)
