This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on October 6, 2025 - October 12, 2025
A listing of TNG Digital Sdn Bhd, operator of the Touch ’n Go eWallet, is in the works, sources say.
Details of the plan are scarce and the listing may not be immediate. The country’s largest integrated fintech firm had reached out to its shareholders in recent months to inform them of its intention, sources tell The Edge.
“They were sounding out to shareholders for an immediate launch, but nothing heard so far,” one of the sources says.
Word on the street is that it will be happening, says another source, with CIMB Investment Bank Bhd said to be leading the charge.
CIMB Group Holdings Bhd (KL:CIMB) is the largest shareholder in TNG Digital with a 45.01% stake, via its wholly-owned unit Touch ’n Go Sdn Bhd.
The rest of the shareholders are Ant International Technologies (HK) Holding Ltd (34.62%), Lazadapay Holdings Pte Ltd (11.38%), ASP Malaysia LP (5.99%) and AIA Bhd (3%), according to CTOS data as at Sept 30.
When contacted, TNG Digital CEO Alan Ni stresses that the company is under no pressure to go for a listing. While an initial public offering (IPO) would be a natural progression for TNG Digital, at this point, “there is no specific timeline” for it.
“Right now, it’s really just discussions we’re having. We’ve not started the real groundwork,” he tells The Edge.
He points out that TNG Digital has been making profits since the third quarter of last year. “Since the third quarter last year, we have been profitable every quarter, not just in terms of Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation), but also at the profit-before-tax and profit-after-tax levels. Our cash flow is positive, we’re generating cash. So purely from a financial perspective, we are not under pressure to go for a listing.”
There is also no pressure from TNG Digital’s shareholders to undertake a listing, Ni says. “An advantage we have is that our shareholders, like Ant International, are the big boys [of investing]. They’re not pushing us to get listed either. They are long-term strategic investors.”
TNG Digital reported a narrower loss after tax of RM42.48 million for the financial year ended Dec 31, 2024 (FY2024), compared with RM190.02 million in FY2023, even as revenue grew by 75.7% to RM411.92 million from RM234.44 million.
It made a loss after tax of RM199.09 million in FY2022, RM202.39 million in FY2021 and RM190.2 million in FY2020. Revenue in those years stood at RM144.42 million, RM53.55 million and RM26.66 million respectively.
In early August, Gurdip Singh Sidhu — the CEO of CIMB Malaysia and CIMB Bank Bhd, who also oversees the group’s digital businesses — revealed that TNG Digital already qualifies as a unicorn. The term denotes a privately-held start-up with a valuation of over US$1 billion (RM4.2 billion).
“We are very confident that TNG Digital is already qualified as a unicorn,” he was reported as saying, without indicating the company’s valuation.
Gurdip shared that TNG Digital has been seeing strong upward momentum in both transaction volumes and service adoption. “The question of IPO is something we will always assess, but it’s not something we are rushing into,” he said at the time.
In September last year, Reuters reported, citing sources, that TNG Digital was planning to go public on Bursa Malaysia in two to three years and could raise US$300 million.
Set up in 2017, TNG Digital currently serves almost 25 million verified users, according to Ni. It facilitates payments for over two million merchants in Malaysia, allows cross-border payments in over 50 countries and international payments through its partnership with Visa. Its offerings include financial services such as investments, lending and credit, remittances and insurance.
What is clear is that TNG Digital’s business is expanding. Late last month, Datuk Johan Mahmood Merican, secretary-general of Treasury at the Ministry of Finance, confirmed that the back-end digital infrastructure for the new RON95 petrol subsidy mechanism, which kicked off on Sept 30, was set up and is being managed by TNG Digital’s wholly-owned unit, Nadi Tech Sdn Bhd.
This back-end system is reportedly what keeps track of identity checks and monthly quotas for Malaysians.
In mid-June, TNG Digital launched its business account aimed at supporting micro small and medium enterprises and gig workers to digitalise their operations, manage income and grow their businesses, all from a mobile device. It marked a notable step forward in making digital financial tools more accessible to Malaysia’s underserved and informal business communities.
Original source: The Edge