Philippines

Toki, a social commerce platform based in the Philippines, has secured $1.8 million pre-seed funding to address demands of untapped market. The pre-seed funding comes from venture capital partners Kaya Founders and Foxmont Capital Partners.

Sprout Solutions, the Philippines’ homegrown business to business (B2B) software as a service (SaaS) company, has acquired the Philippines operations of JustPayroll Inc..

Salmon, a financial technology company based in the Philippines, announced Tuesday that it has become a licensed bank in the Philippines. The firm has received regulatory approval from the Monetary Board of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to acquire the controlling interest in Rural Bank of Sta. Rosa (Laguna), a licensed financial institution serving…

In the interview, Glenn Estrella also shared how 917 Ventures seeks to enter into more strategic partnerships in its home country - the Philippines - and across Southeast Asia. He also shared the challenges within the startup/VC ecosystem in the country and suggestions for the ecosystem, among others.

Philippine insurers Insular Life (InLife) and Oona Insurance group (Oona) have on Thursday jointly announced that they are entering into an agreement, with InLife selling its 40 percent stake in their non-life insurance joint venture, Oona Insular Insurance Corporation (Oona Philippines), making it Oona’s fully owned subsidiary.

Gogoro Inc., a Taiwan-based technology leader in battery-swapping ecosystems that enable sustainable mobility solutions for cities, has announced the commercial launch and availability of its smartscooters and battery swapping ecosystem in Manila, the capital of the Philippines.

Philippines-based finance app GCash – operated by the country’s fintech firm Mynt – has entered agrifintech through a strategic bid with Mayani, an agri-fisheries platform connecting smallholder farmers and fishers to buyers, to tackle the nation’s elusive phenomenon of rural financial inclusion.

Hive Health, a Philippine-based digital health insurance startup, has acquired Health Plan Philippines, Inc. (HPPI), one of the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) service providers in the country. With this strategic initiative, Hive Health will be able to share its technology and data-driven innovations with HPPI’s existing members.

Swarm, a Filipino tech company that connects startup founders with freelance tech builders, has announced that it has raised $1.1 million in a pre-seed funding round. Leading the round are two early institutional investors, Hustle Fund and Plug and Play.

With the powerful growth of widespread digitalization in the #Philippines, #embeddedfinance promises to get integrated into the national digital economy so deeply that it may become a benchmark for the global #fintech industry. And ultimately, the consumer wins.