Xfers Banks $2.5M To Streamline Online Seller Bank Transfers

Xfers, the Singapore-based startup that focuses on bank transfers, said on Wednesday (Jan. 6) that it garnered $2.5 million in a seed round.

As TechCrunch reported in the wake of the fundraising, Xfers will look to use the investment to boost its presence beyond its current locations, most notably Indonesia, with an eye on the first quarter of this year, and then a sojourn into other areas in Southeast Asia. The money will also be earmarked toward new technologies, which are linked to payment gateways.

[bctt tweet=”Xfers will look to use the investment to boost its presence beyond its current locations, most notably Indonesia, with an eye on the first quarter of this year.”]

The investors putting the $2.5 million into the company include Eduardo Saverin, cofounder of Facebook, Golden Gate Ventures and Partech Ventures, among others.

Xfers got its genesis from Cofounders Tianwei Liu and Victor Liew. Liu, according to TechCrunch, had been working in Silicon Valley, and having originally come from Singapore, the executive’s friends would frequently ask him to buy things in the States for them. As the site noted, “PayPal charges a fee, and many consumers do not use it,” leading, at least in part, to Liu telling his friends to put money in his bank account.

Traditionally, in some Asian nations where credit cards and digital payments are less prevalent, online sellers send information about their bank accounts to consumers, who use their bank websites or ATMs to transfer payments to the sellers. Xfers has a different model, wherein online bank transfers can be done through a “one-click payment link” that provides the bank account information and also can keep track of payments. The sellers enter their bank account information and the pricing information of a specific product into the Xfers site. Peer-to-peer transactions are the target for Xfers, said TechCrunch, and expansion efforts will include Hong Kong, Thailand and Malaysia.