M-Service, the company behind Vietnam’s largest e-wallet by users MoMo, has raised an undisclosed amount in a
Series D fundraising, the company announced on Wednesday.
The round was co-led by Silicon Valley investor Goodwater Capital and existing shareholder Warburg Pincus. New
investors Kora Management and Macquarie Capital, as well as existing investors Affirma Capital and Tybourne
Capital Management also joined the fundraising.
The deal comes two years after its Series C round led by Warburg Pincus. Investment details of the Series C round
were not disclosed, but DealStreetAsia learnt from sources that the deal was valued at around $100 million.
Nguyen Ba Diep, co-founder of MoMo, told DealStreetAsia that the Series D funding was larger than its previous
round, and will be used to drive the company’s super app ambition as well as launch Innovation Ventures, its own
investment arm to back local startups that can be integrated into MoMo’s ecosystem.
Warburg Pincus remains the largest shareholder in MoMo, the US PE giant’s head of Southeast Asia Jeffrey Perlman
said in a statement. Eight foreign shareholders, including one individual, hold 66.4% of the company, as per a
corporate filing.
The latest funding would be fuel for MoMo’s ambitions to become more than a digital wallet, and could be used for
expanding MoMo’s user base to 50 million customers, up from 23 million currently.
Nguyen Manh Tuong, co-founder and vice-chairman of M-Service, told DealStreetAsia earlier that having 50 million
users would give the company enough customer insights to provide a spectrum of services to financial institutions,
including credit scoring. MoMo has since secured partnerships with 28 banks in Vietnam.
Founded in 2007, the company had earlier closed its Series A and B rounds, totalling $32 million, from investors
including Goldman Sachs and Affirma Capital, before announcing a Warburg Pincus-led Series C financing in
January 2019.
MoMo’s transaction value grew 3.5 times year-on-year in 2020 to reach $14 billion, the company said.
Vietnam is a mobile-first market, with the majority (57%) of sales taking place on a mobile device, JP Morgan
commented in its 2020 E-commerce Trends Report. It also predicted that the share of digital wallet as a payment
method will rise from 15% in 2019 to 22% by 2023.
South Africa Today
Read more at VolaNews
