Voyager Innovations, a leading technology company in the Philippines behind the end-to-end money platform PayMaya and neobank Maya Bank, raised $210 million in new funds, propelling Voyager’s valuation to unicorn plus status, at nearly $1.4 billion.
Leading the round is new investor SIG Venture Capital, the Asian venture capital arm of SIG. Other new investors include Singapore-based global investor EDBI and investment holding company First Pacific Company Ltd.
Other participants in the round are Voyager’s shareholders PLDT Inc., KKR, a global investment firm; Tencent, a leading technology company; International Finance Corp.; and IFC Emerging Asia Fund and IFC Financial Institutions Growth Fund, two funds managed by the IFC Asset Management Company, a division of IFC.
The company said it would use the new funds to launch Maya Bank services, such as savings and credit, which will be offered seamlessly across PayMaya’s platforms for consumers and enterprises, including micro, small and medium-sized enterprises or MSMEs.
It will also continue to expand PayMaya’s offering with new products like cryptocurrency, micro-investments, insurance and more, as the all-in-one money app of the Philippines.
This integrated ecosystem approach uniquely positions it among e-wallets, banks and fintech players in the Philippines. PayMaya is the only fintech serving all segments of consumers and enterprises with a widely used consumer e-wallet app, the leading enterprise payment processing business, and the most extensive on-ground agent network, Smart Padala.
PayMaya has built the end-to-end rails for this unique ecosystem and plans to leverage the infrastructure with proprietary applications, especially for launching Maya Bank services such as consumer and merchant credit and savings.
“Our strong record of execution and innovation is a testament to our world-class team’s hard work and talent. With this milestone, we are excited to leap forward and bring the best of PayMaya and Maya Bank to help unlock the digital economy for the underserved and unbanked Filipinos,” said Voyager and PayMaya founder and chief executive Orlando Vea,
Voyager and PayMaya president Shailesh Baidwan said the strong endorsement from the new shareholders and participation of existing investors in the fundraising validates the company’s ability to expand into neobanking and add new cutting-edge financial products and services.
“We are excited to bring more game-changing innovations to millions of consumers and MSMEs with our integrated ecosystem as we address the pent-up demand for financial services,” said Baidwan.
Akshay Bajaj, who led the investment for SIG, said:“The PayMaya team is a world-class set of professionals who have built the most complete and unified fintech ecosystem in the market. Leveraging PayMaya’s distribution strength with enterprises and consumers, Maya Bank has the potential to be one of the most successful digital banks not just in the Philippines, but globally. We are thrilled to partner with Voyager and existing shareholders to drive the digital ecosystem to new heights.”
The Philippines is the fastest-growing market in Southeast Asia, with digital adoption of services reaching tipping points during the pandemic, driven by the demands of a young, digital-savvy population.
According to the 2021 e-Conomy Southeast Asia Report by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company, the country’s internet economy grew 94 percent from 2020 to 2021 and is expected to grow to $40 billion by 2025, powered by growth in e-commerce and strong adoption of e-wallet payments.
Despite the accelerated trajectory, the Philippines remain a vastly underserved market with solid growth opportunities. Half of the adult population remains unbanked.
About 47 percent of Filipino adults do not have savings, and of those with savings, one in two save via informal means. Only 1 in 3 adults have loans, of which a mere 18 percent are availing from banks.
The enormous digital financial services opportunity extends to MSMEs. These businesses account for 99.5 percent of the total establishments and employ 62.8 percent of the entire labor force in the country. However, access to credit and financial services for MSMEs remains a challenge, with only 24 percent availing loans or having lines of credit from formal financial institutions.
PayMaya and Maya Bank seek to address the challenge of spurring deeper adoption in a country with limited merchant acceptance and banking presence by providing end-to-end services from an integrated ecosystem.
PayMaya had over 47 million registered users across its consumer platforms as of end-March 2022. This represented more than two-thirds of the adult population in the Philippines.
PayMaya recently introduced cryptocurrency through its e-wallet app after securing a Virtual Asset Services Provider license from the BSP.
It is the leading non-bank enterprise payments processor in the Philippines, enabling over 630,000 online and face-to-face touchpoints to accept digital payments from e-wallets and QR to any credit, debit and prepaid card.
PayMaya’s extensive on-ground presence through its over 63,000 Smart Padala agent touchpoints has allowed it to be embedded in grassroots communities, serving as de-facto financial hubs for the underserved Filipinos.
Voyager entered the digital banking space with Maya Bank, securing one of the six digital banking licenses from the BSP in September 2021 and commencing pilot testing in March 2022. PayMaya and Maya Bank’s thrust will help fast-track the country’s goals of transforming 50 percent of the total volume of retail payments to digital and expanding the financially included to 70 percent of Filipino adults by 2023.