Cento leads $52m round for SE Asia payments player
Cento Ventures has led a $52 million round for 2C2P, a Singapore and Bangkok-based payments platform that claims to serve some 620 million customers across Southeast Asia.
IFC and Arbor Ventures also participated. It brings total funding to $70 million. Melissa Guzy, co-founder of Arbor, described the company as “freeing up trillions of dollars stuck within the cash economy.”
Founded in 2003, 2C2P provides banked and unbanked customers with a suite of digital payment products, including a card payment gateway for online businesses and a related non-card service that leverages offline facilities, a P2P money transfer platform on Facebook, and a QR code payment system. Operations span Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Philippines, Myanmar, and Hong Kong.
“Having achieved a critical mass both in terms of market share and our merchant base, and looking at the continued growth and potential of Southeast Asia’s Internet economy, we felt this was the right time to bring in additional resources so we can strengthen our market leadership position, expand the business, and compete more effectively,” Aung Kyaw Moe, founder and CEO of 2C2P, said in a statement.
2C2P emphasizes its enterprise strategy as a core focus, claiming regional leadership in providing payments services to airlines, travel companies, and global retailers. “We’re not consumer tech and we don’t want to be,” Aung added. “2C2P’s strength lies in our relationships with our merchants. We know what they need, how they want to collect payments, and we can build it for them. And that’s why they trust us with their business.”
Singapore-based Cento, previously known as DMP, targets under-invested niches in emerging digital markets across Southeast Asia. The firm typically makes Series A-stage deployments of about $1 million, committing up to $4 million over the lifetime of each investment. As such, its role as the lead investor in the latest round for 2C2P appears to represent a substantial deviation in strategy. IFC indicated in a disclosure earlier this year that it was considering a contribution of $15 million.
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