MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Volopay, a Y Combinator-backed Singapore-based corporate cards and payable management startup has successfully raised US$29 million in its Series A round through a mix of equity and debt. The investment round included participation from JAM Fund, Winklevoss Capital Management, Rapyd Ventures, Accial Capital, fintech veteran and angel investor Jeffrey Cruttenden – CEO of Acorns along with Access Ventures, Antler Global, and VentureSouq.
The strategic investment from leading blue-chip investors will fuel Volopay’s foray into the Philippine market to tackle two of the most pressing problems that SMEs and startups face – high Forex (FX) charges incurred for international payments and the lack of a uniform platform to access all spend data. Volopay provides companies with multi-currency wallets to hold money in PHP and any major currency – USD, SGD, EUR, GBP – and subsequently use it for payouts, eliminating exorbitant amounts of FX charges levied on international payments.
Since its seed funding, Volopay has grown exponentially for its clients to effortlessly streamline expense management. With a 150+ member team spread all over major business centres in the Asia Pacific region, such as Singapore, Australia, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, Volopay has amassed an impressive clientele with the likes of Upmesh and Locad, among others.
Volopay is disrupting traditional business banking and aims to be adopted as the single and only solution growing, global businesses need for their cards, invoice automation, and bill payments along with the added bonus of a multi-currency business account without the hassle and limitations of a traditional bank. To achieve this, Volopay has embarked on the ambitious objective of building its own infrastructure and applying for financial licenses in its markets, something no other company has done regionally. Through constructing their own infrastructure, Volopay will enable their global clients to eliminate the need for integration with multiple third-party financial services platforms, delivering a consistent and delightful customer experience regardless of the region they are operating in.
Volopay Co-Founder and CEO Rajith Shaji asserts, “Volopay is an ambitious project. To build an alternative to Volopay, you would have to launch five different startups. We are building the control centre for modern companies for all their financial management needs. Our platform is as easy and seamless to use for a five-person company, as it is for a 500-person company. We want to take our vision of a unified spend management platform to all companies across the world after our initial markets of APAC and MENA.”
“With APAC & MENA making a big wave on the global stage by churning out several unicorn level enterprises every year, accelerating their growth requires an efficient expense management tool that is simple yet scalable, something that Volopay has always aimed for,” said Rajesh Raikwar, Co-Founder and CTO of Volopay.
The highly anticipated Philippine launch is crucial since the growth prospects are immense. With the country being one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing economies in the ASEAN Region, the Co-Founders are looking forward to the expansion slated within the second quarter of 2022.
Justin Mateen, Founder of Tinder and JAM Fund who led the round, said in a statement: “I’ve worked closely with Volopay’s amazing team since my original investment at the pre-seed stage. Given the accelerating growth of the business, and the team’s ability to innovate quickly on the product side with a single-stack and scalable platform across multiple jurisdictions, it was only natural to triple down and lead the Series A round. I am proud to partner with a leader in this space and to help support Volopay to scale to greater heights.”
Michael Shum, Chief Investment Officer at Accial Capital said, “Accial Capital views the B2B corporate spend vertical as a way to support entrepreneurs and SMEs with liquidity and close the credit gap. Volopay has a great ambitious team focused on redlining the finance workflows with its robust technology. We are proud to partner with a leader in this space to help scale.”
Part of Volopay’s Series A funds will be put towards their forthcoming market launches, building and innovating new technologies to complement their existing product, in addition to enhancing integrations with leading enterprise software and project management applications. The company is also hiring aggressively for key positions in each of its markets.
