MOSCOW (Reuters). -TCS Group Holding is Russia’s biggest online bank Tinkoff and will be partnering with BPC Philippines to help it expand into Asian markets. The two companies announced on Thursday.

Tinkoff has almost 20 million customers at mid-February. The bank has allocated up to $200million for South East Asia expansion. The bank stated that it had been in contact with three regulators in November.

Tinkoff believes BPC’s 15-years of Philippine experience and its technological offerings will make it successful, George Chesakov (international expansion leader at Tinkoff), stated in a statement.

JP Morgan analysts see Tinkoff’s Asia push as a sensible and well-balanced decision.

In September analysts wrote that “The Philippines is a attractive market with an enormous, digitally native, but financially underserved populace,” and that it was ripe to experience digital disruption.

The two firms stated that the central bank had recently granted new licences for banking to encourage healthy competition and increase financial access and inclusion.

BPC, headquartered in Switzerland, said Tinkoff would use its software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud payment services for the planned expansion, with its processing company Radar Payments managing the end-to-end payment experience for prospective Tinkoff customers in the Philippines.

Evgenia loginova is Radar Payments By BPC’s CEO. “Success hinges on how quickly new services can be deployed, especially in Philippines, where there will be a lot more market participants in 2022,” she said.