Funding Societies | Modalku, the Singapore-based unified small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) digital finance platform, has on Tuesday announced it has achieved $3 billion over more than 5 million transactions of business financing to SMEs across the Southeast Asian region.
As the company expands across five countries in Southeast Asia, almost 100,000 SMEs have benefited from the access to financing, Funding Societies said in a statement.
The firm said it continues to support underserved SMEs via its extensive range of short-term financing solutions, while achieving an overall platform cohort default rate under 2 percent.
In its move to empower SMEs, the company began offering solutions beyond lending, such as payments and collections.
Since establishing its payments business, Funding Societies has tripled its gross transaction value (GTV) year-on-year through its proprietary solution Elevate, and its integration of CardUp’s payments solutions for FY2022.
“2022 was a big year for Funding Societies despite the uncertain macro environment,
“Committed to empowering SMEs in Southeast Asia, we’ve raised our Series C+; scaled up in Thailand and Vietnam; deepened localised financing propositions; secured our first credit line from a global commercial bank HSBC with US$50 million, entered into payments with CardUp and investment into Bank Index, because SMEs’ needs extend beyond financing,” said Kelvin Teo, Co-Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer, Funding Societies | Modalku.
While there are macro headwinds this year, he said the group is optimistic to continue growing sustainably, like it did in Covid-19.
“We will continue to stay nimble, innovate and scale up in financing, payments and other financial services – catering to various pain points of SMEs,” he added.
According to the statement, another significant milestone for the group was the acquisition of CardUp, a digital payments platform.
Both entities are currently developing a unified digital finance platform for SMEs.
The acquisition has also brought in critical payments talent into Funding Societies.
Together, the platform now covers Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam; with operations in Hong Kong and India too.
Funding Societies also introduced its groundbreaking business expense solution that comes with a credit line – Elevate.
The solution allows SMEs to enjoy faster access to credit as their applications receive approval from the first business day.
Since its launch in Singapore, Funding Societies has served nearly 2,000 SMEs, with Elevate being their first corporate card.
These businesses operate within a range of sectors including construction; information and communications; manufacturing; professional, scientific and technical; and wholesale and retail trade.
According to Funding Societies, the unified SME digital finance platform is exploring to introduce Elevate in its other markets too.
It opined that this will benefit SMEs facing challenges accessing credit to make payments for their business expenditures.
Combining Elevate or other cards SMEs have with CardUp, it said SMEs will be able to use their cards in places that do not accept cards, and facilitate collections from their customers.
CardUp’s payments solutions will be introduced in stages across the other markets that Funding Societies operates in the next two years.
Meanwhile, in 2022, the SME digital financing platform launched its Accounts Payable (AP) Financing solution.
The solution allows SMEs to finance their supplies even before they invoice their customers for work fulfilled, made possible via this facility which is uncommon in Singapore.
Since introducing AP Financing, Funding Societies has financed over SGD$10 million ($7.49 million) in disbursements to SMEs with a majority of businesses in the wholesale trade, general contractors and systems installation.
Funding Societies | Modalku is the largest unified SME digital finance platform in Southeast Asia.
It is licensed in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, registered in Malaysia, and operates in Vietnam.
The FinTech company provides $1 billion annually of business financing to SMEs.
The firm is backed by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, SoftBank Ventures Asia, Sequoia Capital India, Alpha JWC Ventures, SMBC Bank, BRI Ventures, VNG Corporation, Rapyd Ventures, Endeavor, EBDI, SGInnovative, Qualgro, and Golden Gate Ventures among others.