Funding Societies, which offers Islamic fintech solutions, is acquiring regional payment solution CardUp for an undisclosed amount, in a bid to expand its lending and financing business to include payment.
Subject to regulatory approvals, the purchase would allow the SME digital financial platform to acquire CardUp’s payment capabilities including domestic and cross-border card payments to non-card accepting recipients, online payments acceptance, invoice automation tools as well as its licenses and integrations with a third-party business software.
Since its launch in 2015, Funding Societies has come a long way, having secured licenses in Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand as well as being registered in Malaysia. Last month, it expanded into Vietnam, while in April, it invested in Indonesia’s Bank Index. These developments follow on the heels of the platform’s US$295 million Series C+ raise in February, out of which US$144 million was equity funding. The firm is backed SoftBank Vision Fund 2, SoftBank Ventures Asia, Sequoia Capital India, Alpha JWC Ventures, SMBC Bank, Samsung Ventures, BRI Ventures, Endeavor, SGInnovate, Qualgro, and Golden Gate Ventures among others.
Funding Societies has disbursed RM10.28 billion (US$2.45 billion) in business financing across 5.1 million deals as of the 29th June 2022. In Malaysia in particular, where it offers Shariah compliant trade financing solutions, Funding Societies dominates the digital SME financing landscape commanding over half the market share.
Its acquisition target, CardUp, also headquartered in Singapore, counts micro businesses, SMEs and corporates among its clients which it says number in the tens of thousands. Quarter-on-quarter, CardUp has experienced a 53% growth driven by client demand to digitize payments.
Nicki Ramsay, the founder and CEO of CardUp, will join Funding Societies’s management team to lead its payment business while retaining all of CardUp’s employees across Asia.
“Having known Nicki and CardUp since 2018, we find CardUp has a great cultural and strategic fit. Acquiring CardUp enables us to leapfrog and accelerate our market leadership in the regional fintech space, integrating payments capabilities, enhanced user experience and local licenses to our digital lending experience across key markets,” Kelvin Teo, the co-founder and group CEO of Funding Societies (or Modalku as its known in Indonesia), commented.