Philippine FinTech Startup PayMongo Raises $2.7M

PayMongo, a FinTech startup that helps businesses and merchants set up online payments systems, has raised $2.7 million in a seed funding round, according to a report by TechCrunch.

The company serves businesses in the Philippines and other regions in Southeast Asia. Investors in the round include the Founders Fund, Peter Thiel and Stripe. Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital, Soma Capital and others also participated in the funding round. 

PayMongo is a relatively new company, having been launched in June by CEO Francis Plaza, COO Edwin Lacierda, CTO Jaimie Hing and Chief Growth Officer Luis Sia. The company has helped upwards of 1,000 businesses with its technology and it said it’s growing 117 percent week over week.

The company said it will use the financing to hire more workers, develop new products and complete partnerships and business acquisitions. The company plans to keep growing in the Philippines, a country where the central bank is pushing cashless payments and wants to see them increase to 20 percent.

CEO Plaza plans on making PayMongo the largest payment service provider in the country, before he focuses on expansion into other countries. 

He said the company’s genesis was realizing that payments were the most difficult feature to integrate into new products and online services. Despite the fact that the Filipino economy was booming and more and more people were going online, Plaza said online payments have not been at the forefront of that transition. 

“When you want to launch something online for a payment gateway, you have to deal with banks and many different financial institutions. It takes months, we tried it ourselves, from negotiating rates to submitting paperwork. It takes a long time, and then in the end you are charged high fees,” he said.

Even when a business gets a loan from a bank and gets a business off the ground, it still needs to figure out how to route payments, and Plaza said that can be difficult, especially without the technological know-how. 

Y Combinator Partner Kevin Hale said PayMongo is providing an important service. 

“At YC, we love companies who build services that empower startups. We believe PayMongo will provide the infrastructure that is needed for more Filipinos to become founders who are in charge of their own destiny.”