BayaniPay raises $4.5 Seed funding to expand global financial services

BayaniPay now has fresh capital amounting to $4.5 million to expand its technology team as the company scales its product lineup and expands into more geographies.

The planned expansion will allow BayaniPay to deliver more financial solutions to Filipinos in the U.S. soon.

Investments in the seed round came from East West Bank, Wavemaker Partners, and Talino Venture Labs.

East West Bank has joined BDO Unibank, the Philippines’ largest bank; Asian Journal, one of the leaders in the Asian American media industry; and Seafood City, the largest Filipino-owned supermarket chain in the U.S., in BayaniPay’s roster of industry-leading collaborators.

Early this year, BayaniPay, a financial service for global professionals, contracted with East West Bank, the largest independent bank headquartered in Southern California, to offer banking services to Filipino American customers, including a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insured checking account.

The collaboration positioned BayaniPay as the first cross-border, digital financial service for the Filipino American community, which is about 4.2 million with accounts amounting to $146 billion or 14.4 percent of the Asian American market in the United States: a segment that was previously underserved by traditional banks and other financial institutions.

With its offer of easy, convenient, and low cost cross-border financial services from the United States to the Philippines, customers get to enjoy a host of benefits from its feature-rich platform, including access to a digital checking account, a debit card that maximizes spending power, and zero fee remittance and market-leading forex rates for Filipino Americans who are sending money home.

BayaniPay is also collaborating with BDO Unibank to enable its users in the U.S. to directly pay bills, tuition and other school fees, medical expenses, and even real estate in the Philippines through the use of paycodes.

Together, BayaniPay and BDO Unibank are working to find ways to provide convenience to global professionals by breaking ceilings in the digital banking landscape.

During its first three months in the market, BayaniPay disrupted the digital remittance industry by offering, through BDO Unibank, zero fees and market-leading exchange rates.

Its neobank expansion also allows customers to open a digital bank account with a Visa debit card in the United States through East West Bank—enabling faster, frictionless cross-border payments and rewards on customer transactions.

“On behalf of East West Bank, I applaud BayaniPay’s progress in our digital banking technology to provide omnichannel banking as a service to underserved customers,” said Parker Shi, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of East West Bank.

Shi added that BayaniPay customers can now enjoy the same quality of service, whether they’re banking with their mobile devices or transacting at their local East West Bank branch.

From the time that it announced it expansion, BayaniPay gained over 7,000 users and its work in disrupting the global banking landscape has caught the attention of many digital publications, including Forbes and American Banker.

CEO Winston Damarillo said he is very excited about how quickly BayaniPay has grown. He said they are committed to continue to work hard in order to eliminate the financial hardships of new immigrants and minority communities.