Thai virtual bank Clicx chose London software vendor Thought Machine on November 3 to run its core banking engine, clearing its infrastructure setup ahead of rival licence holders.

The consortium, owned by state-controlled lender Krungthai Bank, mobile carrier Advanced Info Service, and fuel and convenience retailer PTT Oil and Retail Business, is the first entrant to claim full operational readiness under the central bank schedule.

Clicx runs on Vault Core, a cloud system that separates ledger code from product rules. Instead of waiting on an outside vendor to modify backend code when rolling out credit products, the bank can adjust interest rate schedules and repayment periods directly. The bank targets nano-loans and digital personal credit at freelancers, daily wage earners, and mom-and-pop vendors who lack standard salary slips. Risk assessment relies on customer-consented behavioural records pulled from AIS mobile accounts, OR petrol stations, retail cash registers, and Krungthai payment networks.

Virtual banks routinely promise financial inclusion, but uncollateralised micro-lending often collapses under high non-performing loans when underwriting relies on static quarterly statements. By feeding real-time merchant settlement receipts and telco top-up histories into its ledger, Clicx tries to calculate cash flow before a borrower misses a payment. If a roadside stall owner buys fuel and stock each morning through OR channels and accepts digital payments via Krungthai, the transaction frequency acts as the credit score.

That cross-ecosystem architecture brings operational friction. Merging customer profiles across three massive consumer databases requires strict compliance under Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Act, which governs explicit user consent, data correction, and deletion.

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