(Bloomberg) -- Southeast Asian payments platform 2C2P Pte, which helps airlines, travel companies and online shopping malls handle payments from customers in the region, has raised $52 million from investors including the World Bank's International Finance Corp., Cento Ventures and Arbor Ventures to fund expansion.
The new funding round will bolster the company's position in Southeast Asia's burgeoning digital payments market as more customers move online to shop, order meals and book flights and hotel rooms. Driven by new technologies and startups, the region's financial services are undergoing a rapid transformation. Digital payments in the region are projected to exceed $1 trillion by 2025, from $600 million in 2019, according to a recent study by Bain & Co., Google and Temasek Holdings Pte.
Even with so much local growth still untapped, 2C2P's ambitions stretch beyond its local region, the company said in a statement, and it will look to expand further afield “over the next year.”
Read more: Banks, Startups Build a $38 Billion Southeast Asia Fintech Arena
Chief Executive Officer Aung Kyaw Moe said 2C2P will continue to serve corporate clients rather than consumers directly. “We know what they need, how they want to collect payments, and we can build it for them,” he said about the company's corporate clients in a statement.
Founded in Bangkok in 2003 by Aung, a Myanmar-born computer programmer, 2C2P is among the earliest entrants in the business of helping companies collect online payments from consumers. Aung has in the past shunned raising money through an initial coin offering, a once-popular sales process among startups, and has held talks with potential buyers for his business including ride-hailing giant Grab, which is branching out to digital financial services.
“2C2P has the right recipe to serve large, multi-country merchants who face the complexity of payments in Southeast Asia,” said Dmitry Levit, a partner at Cento Ventures in Singapore, which has been a 2C2P investor since 2011 and led the new funding round.
To contact the reporter on this story: Yoolim Lee in Singapore at yoolim@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom@bloomberg.net, Vlad Savov
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