Mizuho Bank led a group that invested about $200 million through a Series E funding round in Vietnam’s M_Service JSC, which operates Warburg Pincus LLC-backed FinTech app MoMo, putting its value over $2 billion, according to a Bloomberg report Tuesday (Dec. 21).
Ward Ferry Management and existing shareholders Goodwater Capital LLC and Kora Management also contributed to the fundraising effort, co-founder Nguyen Manh Tuong told Bloomberg. That money is on top of the more than $100 million the company raised in January.
MoMo will use the fresh capital to strengthen its position in the market and improve its products, said Nguyen, who is the company’s executive vice chairman and co-chief executive officer. MoMo will also increase its investments in technology and support digital transformations for mergers and acquisitions in the small- to medium-size business (SMB) sector.
There are no plans for an initial public offering (IPO) in the next several years, he said.
“The biggest challenge is still trust,” Nguyen said. “Going to the more rural areas, we still need to invest our time and money in educating the users.”
Southeast Asia’s internet economy is expected to double to $363 billion by 2025, according to a recent research paper from Google, Temasek Holdings Pte and Bain & Co.
Related: Japan Has a Private and Public Digital Yen in the Works, But Will Cash-Friendly Consumers Go Along?
Mizuho is part of the Digital Currency Forum, a consortium of 74 major companies and banks, local governments and other organizations that hope to have a privately issued digital yen stablecoin on the market in Japan by late 2022.
The Bank of Japan (BoJ) said in April that it intends to have a phase-one test of a real digital yen — a central bank digital currency — completed by March 2022.
Japanese consumers have trusted the cash and bank passbook systems across the nation for decades and see no reason to change. Also, Japan’s crime rate is very low and cash is accepted everywhere there because there are no fees associated with it for consumers or merchants, and transactions are completed immediately.
About half of all Japanese households are thought to have a cash nest egg.
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