[ad_1]
last week, A Singapore-based digital payment platform for businesses conducting cross-border transactions has raised $16.9 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia. With this funding, the company aims to grow its business in markets such as the Middle East and Europe.
Why the Middle East?
Tazapay helps businesses around the world provide highly localized customer experiences with local payment methods, and this is very important in the Middle East, a key travel hub that connects Europe to Asia, according to Tazapay.
In particular, Tazapay wants to explore opportunities in the travel and ecommerce sectors in the Middle East.
Online travel agencies and travel/hospitality companies that want to make and receive payments from travelers around the world must partner with payment providers in their respective markets. TazaPay aims to make this easier by giving travel companies access to a global payment network where they can make and receive payments using the end-user’s preferred payment method.
“The Middle East has become a major hub for entry into the GCC and Africa. We are getting a lot of interest from B2B travel platforms like RezLive who want to sell travel packages to other travel agents around the world,” said Tazapay CEO and Founder Rahul Shinhal. Existing platforms help to easily collect payments through local payment options.”
Tazapay is another growing e-commerce business in the Middle East. E-commerce players from the Middle East are seeing more buyers from Africa, Latin America and Asia, and TazaPay’s platform allows consumers in these markets to pay with local payment methods they are familiar with.
Payments in real time
Open banking and real-time payment network services such as Singapore’s PayNow and India’s UPI have increased the expectations of buyers and businesses regarding real-time payments.
“Buyers prefer to use recurring payments over traditional networks, and businesses want to expand globally without the hassle of local setups,” Rahl explained.
“Tazapay is building the payment and compliance infrastructure for cross-border commerce and services. This is a big area, and it is seeing an inflection point.”
Tazapay offers its customers over 170 markets for card coverage and over 85 markets for local payment collection through a single API integration. “This provides low cost and secure payment acceptance from end customers (buyers) without the need to create local entities everywhere,” explained Rahul.
Tazapay recently established an office in the United Arab Emirates to meet the demand for its services in the Middle East. He is looking to build a business development team on the ground to support the needs of the region. The company plans to build a local collection network for buyers in the Middle East who want to buy from Asia and/or any part of the world.
Market game
Tazapay’s customers include IndiaMART, an online B2B marketplace that connects over 7.4 million sellers and 165 million buyers. BrightCHAMPS, a global live-learning platform available in over 30 countries; WTX, a used truck marketplace platform; RezLive, a global travel platform headquartered in the Middle East; and Advantage Club, an employee engagement SaaS platform.
Tazapay has partnered with Standard Chartered to provide innovative business-enabling payment solutions for enterprise marketplaces.
Globally, the company competes with players like TransferWire, Veem and Plooto.
“The Tazapay team has unique insights and experience in leveraging tailwinds (in cross-border transactions) and Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia is excited to partner with them,” said Akkash Kapoor, Vice President, Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia. with Gulf Edition of your story.
Other investors included in the funding round include EscapeVelocity, PayPal Alumni Fund and renowned angel investor Gokul Rajaram joined as new investors in the company. Existing investors Fundamental, Jan Capital, RTP Global and Saison Capital also participated in the round.
“The new investors will support our vision to become a cross-border infrastructure for global platforms, doubling our market presence and integrating all real-time banking networks in the world under one API,” says Rahul.
Going forward, Tazapay plans to expand its core capabilities beyond ecommerce and travel, including education technology and software-as-a-service, and add more local payment methods. The company plans to expand its real-time local aggregator channels from 85 markets to 100 by the end of this year with its recent funding round.
For any press related questions or to share your press releases, write to us at
[email protected]