TNG Digital Crosses Profitability Tipping Point as Non-Payments Revenue Hits 53%
TLDR
- TNG Digital’s non-payments business now drives more than half of revenue, with cross-border payments at 11% and B2B tech at 15%
- The company broke even in September 2024 and has stayed profitable every month since, with 2025 as its first full profitable year
- Verified user base has climbed to 27 million (23 million Malaysians — over 85% of the country’s adult population)
- Roughly two million merchants sit on the platform, with 80% being SMEs that Alan Ni says are now the next growth frontier
- CEO Alan Ni pushes the app from “Yahoo era” icons toward “Google era” search, with voice and agentic AI on the roadmap
Three years ago, TNG Digital had a problem that sounded like a compliment. It was running Malaysia’s largest e-wallet, with the deepest user base and the strongest brand recognition, but it was still losing money. The deeper it pushed into payments, the more it bled. As CEO Alan Ni told Fintech News Malaysia in a recent interview, the company’s economics simply could not turn scale into profit when QR transactions were priced at or below cost.
That realization triggered a deliberate pivot. Payments used to account for around 75% of the company’s revenue. Year-to-date in 2026, that share has fallen to 47%, meaning more than half of TNG Digital’s income now comes from elsewhere. Cross-border payments, which were effectively zero in 2023, now contribute 11% of revenue. B2B technology and merchant services, also starting from zero three years ago, contribute another 15%. The mix shift helped TNG Digital break even in September 2024, and Alan said the company has remained profitable every month since.
A 27 Million-User Platform Looking for What Comes Next
TNG Digital today counts 27 million verified users, including 23 million Malaysians — more than 85% of the country’s adult population. Around 13.5 million transact on the app every month. Roughly two million merchants accept TNG eWallet, and about 80% of those are small and medium businesses.
That footprint gives the company something rare in Malaysian fintech: an installed base that almost every Malaysian already uses. The challenge now is figuring out what else to do with it. Alan compared the current app experience to Yahoo’s early homepage era, packed with categories and links where everything is technically there but finding it is another matter. TNG Digital is now migrating toward a “Google era” experience built around a prominent search bar, with voice interfaces and agentic AI further out on the roadmap.
The shift has not been frictionless. Familiar icons moved during the redesign, and some users complained when they could not find routine features like parking payments. Alan acknowledged the rollout could have been smoother but argues search-first navigation will eventually make the app more accessible, especially for older users who rely on younger family members to remember where to tap.
What Comes Next for TNG Digital
The clearest signal from Alan is that merchant services are the next growth engine. TNG Digital already has two million merchants on the platform, but turning digital acceptance into customer retention is the harder problem. Big chains can afford their own loyalty apps, while a neighbourhood café or independent shop typically cannot. And customers are not going to download fifteen separate loyalty apps.
That gap is where TNG Digital wants to position itself as infrastructure — loyalty, mini-app experiences, and merchant tools built on top of an app Malaysians already keep on their phones. Alan described merchant digitisation as “a big business” the company has barely started to tap. He was also cautious on agentic payments: TNG Digital’s GoTravel feature can already help plan a trip, but the customer still completes the final payment step.
Our Take
TNG Digital’s profitability pivot is one of the more under-reported Malaysian fintech stories of the year. The headline — 27 million users, first full-year profit in 2025 — sounds familiar from a decade of “Southeast Asian super-app” coverage, but the substance is different. The company is showing that payments scale in Malaysia can be loss-making unless the surrounding revenue stack grows fast enough to subsidise thin transaction margins. TNG Digital has reached the point where non-payments revenue is larger than payments revenue, and the merchant services pipeline is the bet for the next leg of growth.
For Malaysian consumers, the practical takeaway is that the app you already use for tolls, parking, and QR pay is about to ask you to do more inside it — search for tyres, search for travel, eventually ask it to do tasks for you. Whether that makes the app indispensable or just crowded is the question TNG Digital has to answer over the next two years.
