Singapore's Tazapay Secures USD 16.9M in Series A Funding Round

Tazapay, a leading fintech company specialising in cross-border payments, announced today that it has secured USD 16.9 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia, with new investors including EscapeVelocity (escp.vc), PayPal Alumni Fund, and renowned angel investor Gokul Rajaram. This round was also attended by existing investors Foundamental, January Capital, RTP Global, and Saison Capital.

Tazapay intends to use the funds to further scale its business across Asia and expand in other regions where its services are in high demand, such as the Middle East and Europe. This includes the application of payment licences in major markets, which will expand Tazapay's global payment network. To better serve the growing list of verticals that includes cross-border e-commerce, education technology (EdTech), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and travel, the company will also beef up its core capabilities and add more local payment methods.

With the advent of open banking and the maturation of real-time payment networks such as Singapore's PayNow service and India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI), businesses and end consumers have increased their expectations for payments to be made in real-time and using a payment method they are familiar with. Through a single API integration, businesses now have access to Tazapay's global network of over 170 markets for card coverage and 85 markets for local payments collection coverage, allowing them to accept low-cost and secure payments from their customers without having to create local entities everywhere. The company intends to increase its real-time local collection channels to more than 100 by the end of this year.

Tazapay's global customers are already benefiting from this integration, including IndiaMART, India's leading online B2B marketplace, which connects more than 7.4 million sellers and 165 million buyers on its platform; BrightCHAMPS, a leading global live-learning platform with presence in over 30 countries; WTX, a used trucks marketplace platform; Rezlive, a global travel platform; and Advantage Club, an employee engagement SaaS platform. Tazapay has also collaborated with Standard Chartered to provide innovative commerce-enabled payment solutions for enterprise marketplaces.

"After Surge, we are thrilled to have Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia show faith and conviction in our business by leading and participating in this round. We also welcome EscapeVelocity and PayPal Alumni Fund who are joining us as new investors. These partners will help us realise our vision to be the foremost cross border infrastructure for global platforms as we double down on growing our market presence and consolidating every real-time banking network in the world under one API. We are grateful to both our new and existing investors for acknowledging the evolving needs of our ecosystem and supporting our aspirations," said Tazapay CEO and co-founder Rahul Shinghal.

"Tazapay is building the payments and compliance infrastructure for cross-border commerce and services. This is a large space which is seeing another inflection point. Buyers increasingly prefer to use local real-time payments over traditional networks and businesses are keen to expand globally without going through the hassle of a local set-up. The Tazapay team has unique insights and experience to leverage this tailwind, and Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia is excited to partner with them as they double down on the opportunity," Aakash Kapoor, Vice President, Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia.