NextPay was built with the vision of creating a digital banking platform that addressed the operational pains experienced by MSMEs (Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises). Since launching in January 2020, we continue to deliver the same promise of putting the power of big business banking into the hands of the 16 Million MSMEs that power our country’s economy. To better serve this growing market, we’ve expanded from a team of 4 to an amazing team of 31! We’ve processed more than $9.1M in transactions for more than 100 companies, and helped them grow and scale their business despite trials of a pandemic and legacy processes.
It is with great pleasure that we proudly announce our $1.6M seed funding round!
Singapore-based venture capitalist Golden Gate Ventures and Gentree Fund led the oversubscribed seed financing round. Golden Gate Ventures has interests in digital leaders such as Omise, Codapay, BukuWarung, Stripe, and Xendit, while Gentree Fund is a private investment vehicle of the Sy Family, which owns Filipino conglomerate SM Group.
Among other foreign investors that participated in the seed funding round are Tribe Capital, Broadhaven Ventures, 1982 Ventures, Saison Capital, and Razorpay, Rohit Mulani of GoTrade, and Abhinay Peddisetty and Chinmay Chauhan of BukuWarung. Goodwater Capital, which has invested in Facebook, Spotify, and Twitter, also supported the funding exercise.
Locally, NextPay’s seed funding was backed by Kickstart Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Globe Telecom, an Ayala company, Foxmont Capital, and First Asia Ventures, as well as angel investor Lisa Gokongwei of JG Summit, among many others.
The seed funding we have raised will be used to grow our suite of services, expand its strong customer base, and introduce new digital banking solutions to MSMEs. It will help us accelerate our plans of introducing more meaningful digital banking solutions, including, but not limited to, corporate cards, loans, and integrations with other platforms focused on MSMEs. We will also be hiring more talent to make the NextPay platform more comprehensive, simple, and easier to use and avail of. We aim to provide the best service and experience so that our customers can focus more on growing their businesses.
This is not the finish, but the start of the race.
Raising investment in itself isn’t a marker of success—it's what we achieve with it that counts. At the heart of what we do is our goal of helping the Philippines bounce back. We want to enable growing enterprises to maximize their capital, reach more customers, and generate more jobs and opportunities. This stimulates economic transactions and creates demand for stronger partnerships. It’s a domino effect, but it starts from having a digital platform like NextPay who empowers MSMEs to thrive and do more.
Many MSMEs struggle with growing their business because of outdated banking processes that favor big companies. The pandemic highlighted this pain when a lot of MSMEs were not able to pay their employees and suppliers because they had to queue in banks.
“NextPay uniquely addresses the local needs of its customers by matching SMEs looking to go digital with mobile and convenient digital financial tools...Gentree believes that NextPay will play a key role in supporting our entrepreneurs and enabling the Philippines digital economy,” Gentree Vice President Mark Sng remarked.
At our recently concluded webinar entitled Digital Na Ba Me? We brought nearly 100 entrepreneurs and freelancers together from all over the Philippines, each one wanting to learn how to digitize their business. Our speakers included some of the most notable start-ups in the country that power businesses forward towards digitizing their processes from purchasing products, to taking care of their employees. What we saw was a growing appetite of small business entrepreneurs willing to adapt to change. They are ready for a change that, this time, focuses on them.
Although many of our customers started using NextPay to do batch payments and collections through invoicing, we’re now going beyond just providing seamless ways of collecting, sending and managing business finances. We are building a community of businesses that help one another scale faster. Inspired by our conversations with customers, industry leaders, partners and co-start-ups, we not only bridge MSMEs and banks. Now, we bridge more MSMEs to each other. One of the key initiatives we’re proud to continue pushing forward is our Partnership Program, which enables our platform to showcase MSMEs to our B2B customers so they may find a tool that can help them do better business. This is just the start.
NextPay is a platform that enables CEOs, Finance, HR, and Operations teams to drive successful performance because they are able to focus on strategizing for their business while we optimize the everyday stuff like payroll, payments and purchases. In Golden Gate Ventures Partner Justin Hall’s words: “Managing your businesses’ finances efficiently and confidently is mission-critical to success, and NextPay is building industry-leading digital banking solutions for SMEs to better manage their finances: from payroll to collections, to invoicing.”
As we continue to deliver what the 16 Million Philippine MSMEs need, we’re also dedicated to building our culture first company value to everything we do. This culture is constant value creation for our customers. The team is “programmed” to always think of what we can do to support our customers, where we can contribute. We believe that when we think of others first before ourselves, we get more than just a business—we seal a lasting relationship. In the years that have passed, we learned that anything is possible when you are dedicated to a cause greater than yourself. It is in fact, the only road to fulfilling success.
We’d like to thank you, our friends, early adopters, and loyal users for believing in our mission. We hope more entrepreneurs join us to empower more MSMEs, with the goal of improving financial wellness for every Filipino, one innovation at a time.
P.S. Check out some of the publications that have featured our seed funding: e27, Business World, ABS-CBN, Inquirer, Tech in Asia, DealStreet Asia, AsiaTech Daily, Esquire Magazine, and Bilyonaryo.
