Volopay, a Y Combinator-backed Singapore-based corporate cards and payable management startup, said Tuesday it has successfully raised $29 million in its Series A round through a mix of equity and debt.
The investment round included participation from JAM Fund, Winklevoss Capital Management, Rapyd Ventures, Accial Capital, fintech veteran and angel investor Jeffrey Cruttenden (Chief Executive Officer of Acorns) along with Access Ventures, Antler Global, and VentureSouq, Volopay said in a statement.
The strategic investment from leading blue-chip investors will fuel Volopay’s foray into the Asia Pacific (APAC) and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) markets to tackle two of the most pressing problems that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startups face – high foreign exchange charges incurred for international payments and the lack of a uniform platform to access all spend data.
Part of Volopay’s Series A funds will be put towards their forthcoming market launches, building and innovating new technologies to complement their existing
product, in addition to enhancing integrations with leading enterprise software and project management applications. The company is also hiring aggressively for key positions in each of its markets.
“Volopay is an ambitious project. To build an alternative to Volopay, you would have to launch five different startups. We are building the control centre for modern companies for all their financial management needs. Our platform is as easy and seamless to use for a five- person company, as it is for a 500-person company. We want to take our vision of a unified spend management platform to all companies across the world after our initial markets of APAC and MENA,” said Rajith Shaji, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Volopay.
Volopay is a Singapore-based company on a mission to build a financial control centre for modern businesses. It combines business accounts, corporate cards, bill payments, expense reimbursements, credit, cashback, and accounting automation into one single platform. Since launching in Singapore and Australia, the startup has been on a strong growth trajectory and is now stepping into India, Indonesia, and the Philippines with MENA expansion on the horizon.
“With APAC and MENA making a big wave on the global stage by churning out several unicorn level enterprises every year, accelerating their growth requires an efficient expense management tool that is simple yet scalable, something that Volopay has always aimed for,” said Volopay Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Rajesh Raikwar.
Volopay provides companies with multi-currency wallets to hold money in their base currency and any major currency – USD, SGD, EUR, GBP – and subsequently use it for payouts, eliminating exorbitant amounts of foreign exchange charges levied on international payments.
Since its seed funding, it has grown exponentially to better alleviate its clients’ pain points. With a 150+ member team spread all over major business centres in the APAC region, such as Singapore, Australia, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, Volopay has amassed an impressive clientele with the likes of Funding Societies, Zipmex, Moneysmart, Smartkarma, and Austrionova among others.
“I’ve worked closely with Volopay’s amazing team since my original investment at the pre-seed stage. Given the accelerating growth of the business, and the team’s ability to innovate quickly on the product side with a single-stack and scalable platform across multiple jurisdictions, it was only natural to triple down and lead the Series A round. I am proud to partner with a leader in this space and to help support Volopay to scale to greater heights,” said Justin Mateen, Founder of Tinder and JAM Fund.
Volopay is disrupting traditional business banking and aims to be adopted as the single and only solution growing, global businesses need for their cards, invoice automation, and bill payments along with the added bonus of a multi-currency business account without the hassle and limitations of a traditional bank.
To achieve this, it has embarked on the ambitious objective of building its own infrastructure and applying for financial licences in its markets, something no other company has done regionally. Through constructing their own infrastructure, it will enable their global clients to eliminate the need for integration with multiple third-party financial services platforms, delivering a consistent and delightful customer experience regardless of the region they are operating in.
“Accial Capital views the B2B corporate spend vertical as a way to support entrepreneurs and SMEs with liquidity and close the credit gap. Volopay has a great ambitious team focused on redlining the finance workflows with its robust technology. We are proud to partner with a leader in this space to help scale,” said Michael Shum, Chief Investment Officer at Accial Capital.
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