Sea plans an IPO for Monee, its digital financial services arm across Southeast Asia and Brazil

Sea Limited is planning a public listing for Monee, its financial services arm, according to an internal memo from founder and CEO Forrest Li sent on 20 October and reviewed by Reuters. Li said going public would give the business "the resources and the room to go further and faster than it can today". No timeline, venue or valuation was given.

Monee, formerly SeaMoney, operates in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Brazil, with mobile wallets, payments processing, credit and banking. The Wall Street Journal, reporting on the same memo, said it has been Sea's fastest-growing business in recent quarters.

The memo, sent on the ninth anniversary of Sea's New York listing, said group quarterly revenue has grown more than 80 times since then to $7.8 billion. Sea will also launch Sea Cloud, an AI-first enterprise platform.

The read: a separate listing would put Monee's loan book and credit risk under their own spotlight, apart from Shopee and Garena.