FinTech Razorpay Buys Malaysia’s Payments Startup Curlec

Digital payments company Razorpay has bought a majority stake in Malaysian payments startup Curlec for over $19 million, the companies announced Tuesday (Feb. 8).

Razorpay plans a full acquisition within a year and a half. Curlec, based in Kuala Lumpur, builds solutions for recurring payments for businesses.

“We look forward to the next phase of our journey and scaling together across Malaysia and Southeast Asia,” Zac Liew, co-founder and CEO of Curlec, said in the announcement.

Razorpay has around 8 million business-to-business (B2B) customers, including names like Facebook, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy and others. The company had an over 300% year-over-year growth and has made several other acquisitions, including TERA Finlabs, Opfin and Thirdwatch.

“With Curlec coming onboard, we at Razorpay are really excited as we mark our first step towards expanding in the South East Asia region,” said Harshil Mathur, CEO and co-founder of Razorpay. “With the vast experience in a heterogenous market like India over the last seven years, our expansion to the Southeast Asia payments market is timed exactly to coincide with the company’s growing dominance in all things payments.

“The team and values of Curlec mirrors that of ours in every sense.”

Late last year, Razorpay also raised $375 million towards investing in neobanks, making more acquisitions and entering more markets.

Read more: Razorpay Raises $375M Toward Expansion, Acquisitions

Mathur said in reports that the business had become “the de-facto choice” for payments. He said the company had gone from 5 million to 8 million merchants, and internet businesses had been “scaling very fast” and were getting funded to keep going.

“Neobanking banking is really scaling for us, and all our offerings are now starting to come together,” Mathur said. “We now have 25,000 users who use our banking suite service. This is a new industry we have created working with internet-first brands, early-stage startups.”