MatchMove, Singapore-based embedded finance firm, said Monday it has acquired e-commerce specialist Shopmatic in a $200 million deal, creating an end-to-end embedded finance and ecommerce powerhouse.

The combined company will enable MatchMove to provide its Banking-as-a-Service capabilities to Shopmatic’s ecosystem of over a million e-commerce small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers, MatchMove said in a statement.

According to the statement, MatchMove’s platform provides customisable, fast, secure and regulated embedded financial services, such as banking-in-an-app, powered by APIs, to help enterprise firms offer richer services to their SME customers, while Shopmatic offers small businesses an e-commerce presence, complete with chat, social media, a webstore and automated access to the world’s largest e-marketplaces.

This deal is the first in a series of planned acquisitions for MatchMove to create an end-to-end service for companies in Southeast Asia aiming to digitalise their offerings.

According to the statement, MatchMove has grown its presence rapidly across Southeast Asia in recent times and has customers across Singapore, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam.

The combined entity will operate under the MatchMove Group name, while retaining their individual customer-facing brands for the immediate period.

Shopmatic Chief Executive Officer Anurag Avula, will continue to lead the Shopmatic business while Shailesh Naik, MatchMove Chief Executive Officer, will helm the Singapore-headquartered group as it seeks to add further complementary acquisitions to its stable of SaaS infrastructure solutions.

The combination of the two businesses creates a fintech powerhouse with over a million business customers and their many users. It further positions MatchMove as a unique business to business (B2B) platform meeting the real and growing need in the market for end-to-end fintech and ecommerce.

“Demand for embedded finance and e-commerce is growing extremely fast. Shopmatic has built an amazing business and team with proven ecommerce tools which support SMEs to trade online. The acquisition provides a large user base to deploy our financial services, reaching a huge sector of the economy at scale,

“Enterprise customers can now completely digitalise their supply chains – providing services like supply chain lending and vendor payments through a single platform to Shopmatic’s ecosystem of SME customers,” said Shailesh Naik, Chief Executive Officer, MatchMove.

Meanwhile, Shopmatic Chief Executive Officer Anurag Avula said the deal is about driving the digital economy by combining embedded finance with ecommerce.

“We are building a scalable, business-friendly platform-as-a-service with intelligent tools and data, so every business has the ability to create amazing products to address their markets and while addressing the challenges of moving digital money securely. MatchMove plans to provide modular services, so customers can select and tailor the digital services they need to deliver their commercial objectives,

“In addition to their existing e-commerce services, Shopmatic merchants will now be able to access embedded banking-as-a-service through MatchMove, enabling their buyers to make and collect payments seamlessly and at a lower cost,” he said.

MatchMove provides enterprise customers with a set of customisable APIs which can be integrated into their app to offer own-brand digital wallets, in addition to both virtual and physical cards through Visa, Mastercard and WePay.

The platform comes with a virtual account, ensuring they receive their daily sales funds. This solution also helps Shopmatic and its merchants improve their receivables and reduce their cost of managing payments.

Both MatchMove and Shopmatic were founded and have grown in Southeast Asia.

“I am delighted to see the coming together of both companies as there are substantial and complementary capabilities that they bring to each other and the broader market. MatchMove and Shopmatic will expand each other’s reach and networks to originate new enterprise and SME customers and accelerate platform growth across the region,” Naveen Kumar, Chairman and Board Director of MatchMove Group.

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