Philippines fintech start-up gets $16m Series A
Abu Dhabi’s ADQ has backed a USD 16m Series A round for a Philippines-based financial technology start-up founded by former executives of Russian digital banking leader Tinkoff Bank.
ADQ is investing via its VC platform DisruptAD. The target company, referred to only as Fintech Holdings, is said to be in stealth mode. It will use the funding to apply for local banking approvals and launch services.
The founders are George Chesakov, Pavel Fedorov, and Raffy Montemayor (pictured, left to right). All three left Tinkoff in mid-2022, only weeks after its founder, Oleg Tinkov, publicly criticised Russia for the war in Ukraine and was pressured to sell his 35% stake in the company.
Last year, Tinkov plead guilty to tax fraud related to his personal windfall from Tinkoff’s London IPO in 2013 and agreed to pay a USD 500m fine. Last March, he was sanctioned by the UK government, which said it was targeting banks fuelling the Ukraine war.
Tinkoff is sometimes called Russia’s largest neo-bank and had been pursuing an expansion into the Philippines, an effort headed by Chesakov, as recently as December. Montemayor – a Filipino who has previously held senior positions in the country for Carousell, OLX, and Agoda – was brought into Tinkoff at this time.
Chesakov will act as CEO of the new company, which has plans to target Southeast Asia more broadly, while Montemayor will be head of the Philippines. Fedorov served as co-CEO of Tinkoff from 2021 to 2022. Several other ex-Tinkoff personnel have come over to the start-up, according to their social media profiles.
“It is an exciting and truly watershed moment. Just a few months ago our business could fit on a coffee shop napkin, and today we have more than 30 people in our core team, which keeps growing by the day. We're bringing cutting-edge, global fintech expertise to the Philippines,” Montemayor said in a statement.
Immediate competitors will include Tonik, a Singapore-based and Philippines-focused digital bank founded by Ukrainian serial entrepreneur Greg Krasnov. Tonik raised a USD 131m Series B in February featuring the likes of Sequoia Capital India and Prosus Ventures. It secured PHP 8bn (USD 136m) in deposits in its first year of operation.
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