Vietnamese P2P lender Interloan bags $500k from Phoenix Holdings

Vietnamese fintech firm Interloan has received US$500,000 from Phoenix Holdings after it was named one of the winners at Fintech Challenge Vietnam 2019.

Phoenix Holdings was one of the investment partners for the contest, which was organized by the State Bank of Vietnam.

Photo credit: Interloan

Interloan, founded by Vietnamese founders with banking and IT backgrounds, is a peer-to-peer lending platform that allows officials and employees of a company to provide financing to one another.

Interloan CEO Tran Dai Duong said the company plans to use the new capital to continue investing in technology infrastructure, establish partnerships with new banks, and carry out its business development plans.

Users who lend through the startup’s platform can receive a profit of up to 15%, while the borrower can bear interest rates of about 16.5% to 19% with loans of up to 70 million dong (about US$3,000) for a six-month term. According to the company, all transactions between investors and borrowers are done through Interloan partner banks to ensure transparency.

To date, the company said it has partnerships with three commercial banks and 10 businesses with over 7,000 employees. Duong said that there have not been any overdue loans for more than 1,000 loans signed so far.

According to estimations by the State Bank of Vietnam, there are about 150 fintech companies in Vietnam, with 40 of them operating in the lending space.

One of the biggest alternative lending platforms in the country is Tima, which raised US$3 million late last year to improve credit scoring and expand offline. It appointed LendingClub’s former chief operating officer, John Donovan, to its board and started raising series C money in January.

VayMuon, another P2P lending player, also recently received an undisclosed amount of seed funding to improve its current technologies, launch more products, and expand regionally.