Digital banks in Southeast Asia are racing to onboard millions of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) efficiently and compliantly, and SotaTek, a provider of AI-driven workflow automation, has announced new insights and guidance on transforming merchant onboarding with next-generation AI technologies. The company's framework highlights how agentic AI, voice AI, and intelligent workflow orchestration can reduce friction, shorten onboarding time, and widen market reach.
Unlike traditional banks that rely heavily on card-network partnerships or legacy merchant-acquirer pipelines, digital-first banks in Southeast Asia increasingly depend on merchant onboarding as a core revenue engine. Each transaction made through onboarded merchants drives meaningful income, yet most banks still struggle with manual processes, high drop-off rates, poor onboarding experiences, and limited onboarding specialists to support merchants who may not be tech-savvy.
According to SotaTek, the next generation of onboarding technology relies not on scripted bots or static RPA, but on agentic systems that can reason, guide, adapt, and self-correct across complex onboarding journeys. These systems act as a guided onboarding concierge, assisting merchants step-by-step while validating inputs and documents in real-time. They adapt explanations and instructions based on the merchant's level of digital literacy and reduce dependency on human onboarding specialists.
"Many digital banks have fewer than 100 onboarding specialists but serve millions of potential merchants," said Meng Khong Tong, CEO of SotaTek US and Asia. "By combining agentic AI with OCR, behavioral signal detection, and intelligent workflow design, banks can deliver a personalized, human-like onboarding experience at scale. These systems don't just respond - they anticipate, guiding each merchant through a journey tailored to their readiness, needs, and digital literacy."
Banks in Malaysia and Singapore operate in some of the region's most heavily regulated environments, requiring AI deployments to be auditable, explainable, and integrated cleanly into cloud-native stacks such as AWS and Databricks. SotaTek continues to explore new applications of agentic AI in digital banking, working alongside ecosystem partners to co-design proof-of-concept solutions and accelerate time-to-market. For more information, visit SotaTek's website.
