Goodwater leads $48m investment in Korea's Viva Republica
US-based venture capital firm Goodwater Capital has led a KRW55 billion ($48 million) Series C funding round for South Korean financial technology company Viva Republica.
Bessemer Venture Partners, Altos Ventures and Partech Ventures also participated, along with PayPal, which owns Venmo, a mobile payment service similar to Viva’s flagship product, Toss. The round brings the company’s total capital raised to KRW87.5 billion since 2014.
Toss is a mobile money transfer app that has processed more than $3 billion in transactions from 6 million users across the past two years. The company cites Bank of Korea data suggesting the app is 10 times larger than all of its Korean competitors combined.
“Toss has consistently proven to be world class in terms of product and technology, unlocking unprecedented growth,” Eric Kim, co-founder and managing partner of Goodwater, said in a statement. “They are on track to serve 50% of Korea’s millennials by the end of this year and have a solid product road map to launch services for all user groups as well. There is a clear path for them becoming one of Asia’s most significant fintech unicorns.”
The aim of the latest round is to establish Viva as Korea’s first full-service consumer finance app provider on mobile. Other products include Toss Loans, an app that provides credit rating validation services in order to improve microloan access; and Toss Finance Dashboard, which allows users to identify patterns and troubleshoot problems in their personal finances by organizing comprehensive transaction histories.
Previous investment in Viva includes a $23.7 million Series B round led by Goodwater and Qualcomm Ventures with participation by Altos and KTB Network. Altos and KTB also backed a $4.5 million Series A round for the company in 2015 after a $1 million seed investment the prior year.
Korea’s fintech space is considered relatively nascent but quickly accelerating despite challenges around high fragmentation in the payments segment and laws that prevent merchants from retaining credit card details. Recent activity includes a $200 million investment by China’s Ant Financial in a finance platform targeting Korea and a KRW298 billion commitment to local credit card business Hyundai Card by a group of PE investors.
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