Indonesia’s Lippo Group Bets Big on SG Payment Startup MoolahGo

Lippo Group, an Indonesian multinational conglomerate that established OVO eWallet, has made a strategic investment in Singapore-based multi-currency payment specialist MoolahGo, according to an announcement.

The investment, financial details of which have not been disclosed, adds to Lippo’s portfolio of financial technology companies. In Singapore, the Indonesian conglomerate has also been actively investing, acquiring stakes in OUE Limited, and Healthy Medical, among others.

MoolahGo, started in early 2018, operates a marketplace-based platform that allows market participants to connect with each other directly. The platform provides currency exchange and cross-border payment but bypasses the costly and inefficient traditional intermediaries.

The startup is considered as a major payment institution licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore under the new Payment Services Act effective from January 2020.

MoolahGo said it ntends to use the fresh funds raised in its Series A round to bring to market other payment services that it has been developing, including digital mobile payments. It will also deploy portions of the funds to open up new markets in the region.

The funding round also followed MoolahGo’s seed funding round in March 2019, backed by the founder and former CEO of another payments company TransferTo, now known as Thunes.

“We are delighted to include Lippo as one of our strategic shareholders. We’re encouraged that this Asian giant shares our optimism of the Fintech opportunities in this region, especially in Southeast Asia, and recognize that MoolahGo possesses a differentiated vision and value proposition that allows us to compete successfully in this market,” MoolahGo CEO and founder John Hakim disclosed.

With the recent launch of its B2B API Integration platform, MoolahGo has moved a step closer to its vision of creating a frictionless financial transaction system based on its marketplace platform.

Since the launch of MoolahGo’s API platform, a number of corporates and financial institutions have connected to it to leverage its payment services, the startup said.

Lippo’s investment in MoolahGo comes as the Asia Pacific region saw large financial technology fundraising gains in 2019, offsetting the 3.7-percent drop globally due to a decline in deal activity in China, according to the new report by consulting firm Accenture.