Naspers pours $5M into Coins, a fintech startup for Southeast Asia’s unbanked population

Monday, June 12, 2017

Prolific investment firm Naspers is making a push into bitcoin and financial services after it backed Philippines-based startup Coins.ph to the tune of $5 million.

Coins is focused on offering financial services for the unbanked in the Philippines and Thailand. It uses the blockchain as its underlying technology to facilitate transfers and remittances. It announced the new funding — which comes via the Naspers Ventures division — as an extension to the $5 million Series A round that it closed last October.

Naspers, meanwhile, needs little introduction: the South Africa-based firm specializes in e-commerce and consumer businesses in emerging markets across the world. Its investments include Tencent, Asia’s highest value tech firm, India’s Flipkart, and now-Amazon-owned Souq.com in the Middle East among many others. Its primary presence in Southeast Asia is via global e-commerce firm OLX, but it did put money into Singapore-based bitcoin startup BitX in 2015.

Source: TechCrunch (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Technology
Tags
digital payments, fintech