Online payment platform; PayMongo, has secured a 12 million dollar (1.3 billion Kenyan Shillings) Series A round of funding led by american financial services and software service company; Stripe.
PayMongo which is based in Manila, Philippines offers online payments APIs to business in the Philippines. It was the first Philippines grown financial tech startup to participate in an accelerator program by Y Combination.
PayMongo’s line of products include a payments API which can be seamlessly integrated into mobile applications and websites. Once integrated the websites and applications will then be able to accept payments from digital wallets like GCash and GrabPay as well as bank cards courtesy of PayMongo’s numerous partnerships with financial institutions.
PayMongo also has what it calls PayMongo Links for users and commerce sellers on social media who sell and carry out transactions via social media applications. With PayMongo Links, users can make payments and not have to worry about safety thanks to PayMongo’s risk detection and fraud features.
Stripe was for this round of Series A funding, joined by Y Combinator and Global Founders Capital who are both return investors of PayMongo.
The Series A round of funding also saw BedRock Capital participate as PayMongo’s newest investor.
The Business Lead for Stripe’s APAC; Noah Pepper via a statement revealed that the company invested in PayMongo because, “we’ve been impressed with the PayMongo team and the speed at which they’ve made digital payments more accessible to so many businesses across the Philippines.”
PayMongo was launched in June of 2019 with 2.7 million dollars (292.9 million Kenyan Shillings) in seed funding. Its founders revealed that it was one of the biggest seed rounds ever achieved by financial tech startup based in the Philippines at the time.
PayMongo has with the new Series A funding raised an impressive total of almost 15 million dollars (1.6 billion Kenyan Shillings) in funding.
The Chief Executive and Co-Founder; Francis Plaza revealed that PayMongo has carried out a total of almost 20 million dollars (2.17 billion Kenyan Shillings) in payments since its launch, and has grown at an impressive average of 60 percent since the beginning of 2020, with a major boost coming in March of the same year.
Francis also made it known that PayMongo had initially aimed to commence raising its Series A in the first half of 2021, but it opted to do it much earlier as a result of the increase in demand for its services following the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The Series A funding will enable the startup hire more hands for its engineering team, products team, as well as its design team. It will also help it fast track the release of new features like marketplaces and invoicing, more variety with regards to online payment options, faster payout timeframes and cycles, as well as support for various business models such as subscriptions.
PayMongo, looking to further increase its partnerships with financial service providers and institutions, secure more licenses from the Central Bank which will in turn enable it begin creating and eventually rolling out more financial products and services. It will also be improving its fraud and risk detection systems.
PayMongo is one of the financial technology companies on ground in Southeast Asia who have experienced fast and exponential growth during the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic which has led to a sizeable number of businesses taking their operations into the much safer (health wise) digital space.
According to the Co-Founder of PayMongo; Francis Plaza the total number of digital transactions in the Philippines between January 2020 to April 2020, grew by 42 percent owing largely to the lockdowns imposed by the country’s government.
As at the time of writing this article PayMongo, is the only payment platform in the Philippines which features an onboarding process that is entirely online. This makes it the preferred option for various merchants especially those who are making use of online payments for the first time.
Francis Plaza said, “We have a more efficient review of compliance requirements for the expeditious approval of applications so that our merchants can use our platform right away and we make sure we have a fast payout to our merchants.”
If PayMongo continues its upward leaps especially with the number of lockdowns beginning to get more lenient in various cities, it would help the Philippines Central Bank achieve its goal of growing the amount of online payment transactions in the country by up to 20 percent of its total payment transactions for 2020.
The Government of Philippines first starting creating policies for boosting the adaptation of online payments from as far back as 2015. The decision was made as a way to encourage financial inclusion and economic growth, as the country had achieved success in terms smartphone use and penetration but a lot of its people did not have traditional bank accounts as they came with rather high charges.
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