(4 July 2017 – Singapore) Cross-border payment startup, InstaRem has raised US$13 million (A$17 million) in new capital as it looks to expand its business, which is focussed in Asia, into Europe and North America.
The Singapore-based startup said the raise was led by China’s GSR Ventures with participation from Japan/Netherlands SBI-FMO Emerging Asia Financial Sector Fund. Existing backers Vertex Ventures, Fullerton Financial Holdings, and Global Founders Capital also joined the round. The firm’s last Series A investment round closed US$5 million in early last year.
InstaRem operates a cross-border payment service that is targeted at business users, including banks and retailers. By working with banks and using wholesale rates, the firm can get good cross-border rates for its retail customers, too, InstaRem CEO and co-founder Prajit Nanu said.
According to the company, it is processing 150,000 transfer each month, with an average size of US$1,800 per transaction.
It initially started with Australia, and since expanded to support moving money out of Hong Kong, Canada and Singapore and into 50 countries worldwide. Now, with this funding, it is working to get necessary licenses to expand to all markets in Europe and the US before the end of the year as it aims to take a larger bite out of an industry that processes over US$500 billion in transactions per year. It is also targeting faster Euro payments, dropping the time from around 24 hours to less than ten seconds.
Nanu has said that this is likely to be the last round of VC funding for InstaRem as it is 12 months away from reaching profitability, and looking to seek out a listing in 2020.
“We should have enough capital to run the business — we didn’t want to raise too much,” Nanu said.
“If we hit profitability, we could be looking at an IPO for 2020 [which] would give enough time to build our business.”
“In three years time I think we’ll have a great story,” he added.
“We are making payments a level ground for all, whether that’s a small mobile wallet service with 20,000 customers or a small to mid-sized bank doing international payments.”