PH digital payments startup recruits another funder

By: 10 years ago

Ayannah CEO Mikko Perez

SAN FRANCISCO – Ayannah, a provider of digital commerce and payment services for overseas Filipinos and those without bank accounts, raised additional equity financing from prominent Japanese early-stage Internet and technology investor GREE Ventures, Inc. (“GREE Ventures”).

Veritas Mobile Holdings, Ltd., which operates as Ayannah, announced October 2 from Manila that GREE Ventures has joined other institutional investors such as Wavemaker Labs Pte. Ltd., Golden Gate Ventures Incubator Annex Pte. Ltd., IMJ Investment Partners Pte. Ltd. and Beenos Asia Pte. Ltd. in Ayannah’s upsized follow-on round of financing.

“We are very happy to have GREE Ventures join our roster of investors,” said Mikko Perez, CEO of Ayannah. “Their network of partners and portfolio companies in other South East Asian countries will allow us to solidify our leadership position in digital commerce and payments for migrants and the unbanked in the Philippines and hasten our expansion to other emerging markets.”

Ayannah has launched two services catering to immigrants and the unbanked. Sendah is its flagship B2C service initially targeting the 12 million overseas Filipino diaspora. Sendah aims to provide overseas Filipinos with a better way to support their families in the Philippines. It allows overseas Filipinos to provide much needed products and services to meet their families’ daily needs. Sendah has a growing base of over 50,000 customers with high lifetime value. Soon it will address other immigrant communities from South Asia, Latin America and other markets.

Ayannah also operates Sendah Direct, an award-winning B2B platform addressing the large portion of Filipinos who remain unbanked. It has a growing network of over 7,000 distributors and agents and has served over 9 million unique customers since launch in October 2010.

Sendah Direct started out as a new way to distribute prepaid mobile airtime credits to prepaid mobile subscribers of the three major mobile network operators in the Philippines. Later, Sendah Direct became a new way to distribute prepaid online game credits and micro-insurance products. More recently, Sendah Direct became a new channel for enabling payments, especially for domestic remittance.

“We are thrilled to join Ayannah on its journey to provide much needed digital commerce and payment services to migrants and the unbanked in the Philippines and soon, in other emerging markets,” says Kuan Hsu, principal at GREE Ventures.

“Ayannah has made great strides and we hope that our investment will allow Ayannah to continue and accelerate its progress to become the leading digital commerce and payment service for the vast majority of Filipinos who remain unbanked and who rely on remittances for support. We also would like to help Ayannah expand to other emerging markets in South East Asia,” Kuan added.