AVCJ

China's Lianlian Payment raises $146m from Sequoia, Boyu

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China’s Lianlian Digital, the parent company of payment services provider Lianlian Pay, has raised RMB1 billion ($146 million) from Sequoia Capital China and Boyu Capital in its latest funding round.

This is the second time the two investors have backed the company. In January, Sequoia, Boyu, China Everbright, and Cybernaut Capital, committed an undisclosed amount of funding, according to AVCJ research. Lianlian has raised RMB5 billion since inception, following the latest round.

Founded in 2003 by CEO Guodong Pan, who previously worked at Alibaba Group and its payments affiliate Alipay, Lianlian offers mobile-based micropayment services within China and cross-border. While Alipay and Tencent Holdings-owned WeChat Pay target ordinary shoppers, Lianlian Pay counts small and medium-sized e-commerce operators as its main clients.

The company claims its overall transaction volume since launch has surpassed RMB2 trillion, with compound annual growth of around 139% over the past three years. It has provided overseas and domestic payment services to more than 300 million customers.

The new capital will be used to expand Lianlian's international operations, including the recruitment of more overseas talent. The Hangzhou-based company has set up licensed financial operating companies in Hong Kong, the UK, and the US.

China's third-party payments industry – said to be worth $16 trillion – has faced regulatory headwinds this year as the government seeks to impose tighter controls on cross-border payments amid concerns about capital flight. In February, Alipay and Wechat Pay were fined by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange for processing payments for non-residents without making the appropriate filings and inaccurate reporting of foreign exchange balance of payments data.

Meanwhile, Lianlian Pay, which had worked with PayPal since 2015 to provide fast renminbi withdrawal services for online merchants, ended its relationship with the US company in July, citing "different development directions."

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