‘E-wallet factory’ MatchMove to raise US$150m in series C round, eyes profitability next year

As tech firms jump on a trend of building out payment capabilities to grow their digital businesses and revenue streams, one Singapore startup is well-poised to benefit.

MatchMove helps companies build spending, sending, and lending capabilities within their mobile apps. Its banking solutions can either be integrated into a company’s existing app or made into an app for companies that don’t already have one – all within minutes.

Photo credit: MatchMove

Backed by investors including Vickers Venture Partners, Credit Saison, and Singapura Finance, the company is currently valued at US$300 million, with revenues growing more than 300% year on year. CEO Shailesh Naik expects the startup to turn a profit next year, predicting that the volume of transactions the company processes will hit US$2.5 billion to US$3 billion – up from approximately US$500 million in 2018.

A white label solution

MatchMove’s platform provides modular banking services which can be customized to any company’s needs and delivered in a businesses’ own colors, branding, and customer interface.

This sets it apart from banks, which “do not deliver mass solutions at scale,” says Nisha Paramjothi, the company’s senior vice president for strategy and investments. She adds that banks often insist that partnering companies use their wallets and are “unlikely to co-brand” with them.

Using a third-party e-wallet (from banks or otherwise) would also mean forfeiting valuable user data and, consequently, the ability to build user engagement – the very reason many companies set out to offer payment capabilities in the first place.

MatchMove charges its enterprise clients a one-time setup fee, an annual subscription fee per user, as well as interchange charges (the costs incurred by merchant bank accounts when a customer makes a purchase at a store) for every transaction. Its banking services can be delivered in three ways: via APIs (application programming interfaces), SDKs (software development kits), or its flagship product Lightspeed. The third option, its most recent product that was released in July, is a plain vanilla application that can be launched in a matter of minutes.

MatchMove CEO Shailesh Naik / Photo credit: MatchMove

“We first started offering APIs, which means you needed to have an app, and then you needed to integrate the APIs. As demand grew, even though it [usually] takes 12 to 16 weeks from start to finish, we were having to tell certain customers, ‘Wait three or four months,’” Naik says.

Using continuous integration (integrating code changes in an automated process), the team was able to reduce the time it takes to deliver its solutions to less than a week. However, there was a segment of companies that MatchMove was not able to serve – those without the technical capabilities to manage API integrations on their end, like universities.

Lightspeed, which is currently available to businesses in India and Singapore, provides a standardized solution and, importantly, does not require an API integration on either end. For MatchMove, this automated solution requires less resources compared to developing APIs and therefore less costly to deliver.

Two of the startup’s biggest clients are Indian Railways and low-cost airline SpiceJet. Without an existing app, the former uses Lightspeed – with modifications and enhancements – while the latter employs MatchMove’s API solution, which integrates with its mobile app. Other clients include digital telco Circles.Life and lending platform Home Credit.

Deep diving into payments

Pivoting to lending