KUALA LUMPUR: Funding Societies, Southeast Asia's largest SME digital financing platform, has acquired CardUp to drive the company's payment expansion.
Launched in 2016, CardUp is a Singapore-based payments solution that helps individuals and businesses to make payments to suppliers and collect payments from customers digitally.
Funding Societies co-founder and group chief executive officer Kelvin Teo said acquiring CardUp enables the company to leapfrog and accelerate its market leadership in the regional FinTech space.
"This also helps to integrate the company's payments capabilities, enhanced user experience and local licenses to our digital lending experience across key markets," said Teo.
CardUp founder and chief executive officer Nicki Ramsay said the company has long recognised Funding Societies as the regional leader in SME financing and a complementary counterpart to its expertise in payments.
Ramsay said this acquisition reflects strong strategic and cultural synergy with both parties aligned on the mission to help SMEs improve the way they operate their business and manage cash flow.
"We are confident that CardUp and our employees are in good hands with Kelvin and his team, and we look forward to this next chapter of growth," she said.
Through the move, Funding Societies will acquire CardUp's payments capabilities such as card payments to non-card accepting recipients (domestic and cross-border), online payments acceptance, invoice automation tools as well as its licenses and integrations with renowned third-party business software.
CardUp's payment services will complement Funding Societies' lending products, to offer a unified financial experience for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across the region, enabling SMEs to manage and pay expenses, receive payments, and borrow funds all within one seamless digital platform.
Once the acquisition is finalized and approved by the regulators, Funding Societies will welcome Nicki Ramsay into its management team to lead its payments business while retaining all of CardUp's employees across Asia.
CardUp will continue to operate its consumer and business services and maintain its long-standing relationships with card networks, issuers, and media partners.
Funding Societies and CardUp will tap into strong synergies in the form of complementary talent, technologies, as well as bank and technology partnerships to further empower SMEs in Southeast Asia.