EMQ’s Series B backers include a number of Southeast Asian investors
Hong Kong-based financial settlement platform EMQ has raised US$20 million venture equity financing in its Series B round, the company announced in a statement yesterday.
According to the statement, the round was led by WI Harper Group, a venture capital firm that focuses on investments in the U.S. and Asia Pacific.
The round also saw participation from a mix of existing and new investors, the statement said. From the Southeast Asia region, this included AppWorks, DG Ventures, Intudo Ventures, January Capital, Quest Venture Partners, SparkLabs Taipei, Vectr Fintech Partners, and VS Partners.
United Arab Emirates-based Abu Dhabi Capital and California-based early stage investor Hard Yaka also participated in the Series B round, the statement added.
The funding will be used to advance the payment network’s international expansion plans, drive product development, and fund licensing requirements in Asia, Europe and the Americas, it also said.
“This new funding marks a significant milestone in our next phase of strategic growth as we continue to innovate and deliver a network infrastructure that complies with regulatory requirements and streamlines the complexities in processing real-time international payments across the whole payment ecosystem,” EMQ Co-founder and CEO Max Liu noted.
EMQ is a cross-border settlement network that provides real-time end-point remittance solutions for B2B and B2C enterprises.
EMQ functions as a licensed payments service provider in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Indonesia, and was part of a regulatory sandbox by Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission, the statement said. Further, EMQ is also a registered Money Service Business in Canada.
The company was founded in 2014, according to information on Crunchbase.
“As we look to the future, we will continue to invest significantly towards constant innovation of our cross-border solutions and compliance capabilities,” Liu added, “to deliver additional value to the global payments ecosystem and capitalize on the explosive growth of cross-border B2B payments market – valued to exceed US$218 trillion by 2022.”
Cross-border remittances have traditionally been facilitated by banks and exchange houses. However, due to vast digitization potential, high B2B revenues, and cross-border Ecommerce, fintech players have been looking keenly at the digital remittances space.
The ability to build a digital system also means that these companies can offer more attractive foreign exchange rates than traditional intermediaries.
“As digital transformation intensifies globally, enterprises today are increasingly international in scale and they will require a network infrastructure like EMQ with greater speed, more certainty, increased flexibility and transparency, to expand their business in Asia and beyond,” WI Harper Group Partner Edward Liu said in the statement.
Header image by katemangostar on Freepik
