Peter Thiel, Stripe, Tinder co-founder join Filipino payments startup PayMongo’s US$2.7M funding
PayMongo, a fintech startup which helps businesses in the Philippines accept online payments from multiple channels with ease, has secured a seed investment of US$2.7 million from top Silicon Valley investors, including Founders Fund, Peter Thiel, and Stripe.
Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital, Soma Capital, Tinder Co-founder Justin Mateen and a number of other angel investors also participated in the round.
This fresh capital will allow PayMongo to grow the team, accelerate product development, acquire businesses more aggressively, and close down on many strategic partnerships.
Founded by Francis Plaza (CEO), Luis Sia (COO), Jaime Hing (CTO), and Edwin Lacierda, PayMongo offers easy ways for merchants to receive payments online. The startup also offers an API platform that allows businesses to add payments into their websites, services or apps.
In the near term, PayMongo targets to grow its base in the Philippines, a market with a largely untapped opportunity, and become the biggest payment service provider in the country. Over the next few years, the company plans to offer more products and services to its merchants and eyes expansion towards the rest of Southeast Asia.
“We started PayMongo after being frustrated for years with the cumbersome process of integrating payments into websites, apps or services in the Philippines. As a team of software engineers ourselves, we believed that adding payments should be fast and simple,” said Plaza in an earlier interview with e27. “We at PayMongo are building the Stripe for the Philippines. Our vision is to be the invisible engine of commerce that will enable individuals and merchants to easily join the internet economy and grow fast into large and successful businesses.”In his opinion, building a modern payments infrastructure provides a backbone for new and existing players to thrive in the rapidly evolving digital economy. “We’re building the highway that other founders and companies like us can use so that they can focus on building great products and scale massively.”
Since launching in mid-June, the company has built a network of more than 1,000 businesses using the platform to receive online payments with the total transaction value processed growing at an average of 117% week-over-week.
PayMongo is the first fintech company from the Philippines to make it to Y Combinator joining the accelerator’s class this summer.