Asia-Pacific fintechs Volopay and Microleap land funding

Written by Tanya Andreasyan
26th January 2021

Volopay and Microleap raise funds

Singapore-based Volopay and Malaysia-based Microleap, have raised $2.1 million and $3.3 million, respectively.

Volopay reeled in $2.1 million in seed round, led by Tinder founder, Justin Mateen. Other participating investors included Soma Capital, CP Ventures, Y Combinator, VentureSouq, and Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur (founders of Razorpay).

Volopay says its goal is “to provide businesses and start-ups in the Asia Pacific region with a powerful control centre for all their financial needs”. It combines business accounts, corporate cards, bill payments, expense reimbursements, credit, cashback, and accounting automation into one single platform.

Volopay’s founders are CEO Rajith Shaji and CTO Rajesh Raikwar. They met during their tenure at a local financial services comparison platform and were both frustrated with the difficulties of tracking different company spending like subscriptions, vendor payments, and employee reimbursements.

“The whole process is broken. I would spend hours noting down each individual spend and then have to reconcile it with receipts. Once submitted through the company’s expense platform, I would wait a whole month before being reimbursed the funds,” says Shaji.

Volopay claims to be growing at 70% in Singapore since its launch in mid-2019, with over 100 companies on its client list. It is now moving into the Australian market. It has integrated with the API suite of Australian paytech Airwallex, providing Volopay “with robust payment and issuing capabilities”.

Microleap, a peer-to-peer (P2P) financing platform in Malaysia, concluded its latest financing round with a MYR 13.2 million ($3.3 million) investment from a local investment holding company, MAA Group.

The money will go towards growing employee numbers and further developing its technology. The company also plans to expand its Islamic P2P financing services to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and launch new products – car dealer financing and invoice financing – for the Shari’ah-compliant sector this year. A mobile app is also on the agenda in 2021.

Launched in 2018, Microleap provides alternative financing and investment tools. “A proudly Malaysian fintech platform, Microleap focuses on the microfinance sector and we are the first P2P operator in Malaysia that offers both Islamic and conventional financing on the same platform,” it states on its website.

The company’s co-founders are Tunku Danny Nasaifuddin Mudzaffar (CEO), an ex-banker, and Norsharizal Mashahrin (partner), formerly CEO of one of the largest microfinance institutions in Malaysia.