INDONESIAN financial technology (fintech) company Xendit (PT Sinar Digital Terdepan) announced on Thursday that it has secured a $150-million Series C funding that elevated the company to the shortlist of Southeast Asian unicorns.
The round was led by Tiger Global Management with participation from existing investors Accel, Amasia and Justin Kan’s Goat Capital.
The latest capital will enable Xendit to continue innovating its product suite and make its digital payments infrastructure available to more entrepreneurs in the Philippines and other key markets. By specializing in building hyper-localized products for archipelago nations and catering to a broad spectrum of customer needs in response to the market needs in the Southeast Asian region.
“We’re seeing an incredible shift to digital-first. Whether the business is a small Instagram shop or Southeast Asia’s largest enterprises, it’s now clear that businesses need to have a digital presence,” said Moses Lo, Xendit co-founder and CEO. “Xendit’s digital payments infrastructure enables the region’s new class of entrepreneurs to start and scale their payments faster and supercharges larger companies with modern, world-class financial services.”
Xendit Philippines Inc. CEO and Managing Director Yang Yang Zhang said in an online briefing the company will strengthen its local Philippines operations to help build digital infrastructure in the country and promote financial inclusivity.
Zhang added that Xendit Philippines has seen a more than 200-percent year-on-year increase in total payments volume across the Philippines and Indonesia, maintaining a 25 percent month-on-month (M-o-M) growth rate in the Philippines and continuing a track record of more than 10 percent M-o-M growth since inception.
“Xendit’s new round of fundraising and status as a unicorn will strengthen our mission to provide reliable and secure financial infrastructure to hundreds of thousands of growing businesses across the Philippines. Our dream is to accelerate the growth of the Philippine digital economy by continuing to build first-to-market solutions for enterprises and SMEs alike while introducing the global VC community to the growing local startup ecosystem,” she explained.
Zhang said Xendit Philippines has played an integral part in the company’s growth and journey toward its unicorn status. Despite being a relative newcomer to the local payments space, she said Xendit achieved a quantum leap to becoming one of the biggest payment gateways in the country.
Zhang noted that “legislation is on the right track to provide sufficient support for the emerging market.”
She cited the joint effort of several government agencies to create a committee for the implementation of a Startup Act. Zhang said the law’s implementing rules and regulations “is a testament to the government’s commitment to supporting the growing number of SMEs in the country.”
“We are positive that more initiatives from various sectors and groups will further fuel the startup ecosystem in the Philippines,” Zhang said.
Xendit plans to introduce three key initiatives “to reach out to a broader segment of Filipino entrepreneurs and customers.”
These initiatives include: automatic debit and recurring payments solution; level-up grant for SMEs and individual business owners; and, accelerator program for local start-up firms.