Unicorn FinTech PingPong Lands eMoney License  

Luxembourg regulators have given a thumbs-up to the FinTech PingPong, authorizing it to do business as an Electronic Money Institution (EMI).

The new license will allow PingPong to offer customers “a more flexible array of services,” the company said in a news release. The B2B company has offices in New York, San Francisco, Japan, Hong Kong and Hangzhou, China.

PingPong says it has worked with 800,000 sellers across the globe, spanning 14 markets. The San Mateo, California-based company said the new license would aid its expansion efforts and ensure that it can “provide a secure electronic wallet.”

Earlier this year, PingPong achieved “unicorn” status, meaning it is worth more than $1 billion. The company is now valued at $1.5 billion.

The license “will strengthen our existing services, which can support customers on different marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay and Walmart, and grant us the flexibility to broaden our business model to beyond eCommerce platforms,” said Ning Wang, co-founder and chief business officer of PingPong, in the release.

“Today, Luxembourg is one of the leading payment and e-money hubs in the EU,” said Pierre Gramegna, minister of finance, Luxembourg. “I welcome that PingPong has just upgraded its Luxembourg presence with a new e-money license that will help it better serve its European customers.”

The country’s Financial Sector Supervisory Commission officially issued the license.

“PingPong is truly going global, with compliance and security placed at the heart of everything we do,” added Wang.

PingPong was founded in 2015 to enable eCommerce payments as online spending took off.

“We have seen lots of people rushing into this market, possibly on the idea that what we have built over the last three years can be easily replicated,” Aaron Xu, PingPong’s vice president of global FI partnerships, told PYMNTS. “The wall that many new cross-border eCommerce entrants are running into at top speed is the failure to realize upfront what a massive undertaking it is to build global scale for seamless, secure, cross-border settlement.”