Coda Payments’ road to profitable gaming-fintech unicorn

During the pandemic, while the tech industry focused on staying afloat, a Singapore-based fintech startup quietly grew leaps and bounds.

Coda Payments, whose business includes facilitating transactions for digital content and gaming, saw its geographical footprint double and headcount triple since the start of the pandemic. But more importantly, what started as a carrier billing platform 10 years ago has now evolved into multiple business lines, including an independent digital content marketplace.

Photo credit: Coda Payments

That product, called Codashop, was launched in 2014, and it has since become the startup’s main growth driver, Coda Payments co-founder and executive chairman Neil Davidson tells Tech in Asia. It will also remain as the company’s “strategic priority,” he adds.

While Davidson declined to reveal the firm’s revenue mix, the signs are clear. Coda Payments had raised only US$25 million till 2019, but by early 2022, it netted US$690 million at a US$2.5 billion valuation, catapulting itself into the unicorn club.

“It takes a long time to build something of value in most cases, and that’s certainly been true of us,” Davidson says. “But I think, in hindsight, our timing was pretty good. We just had incredible kinds of tailwinds which allowed us to thrive.”

What sells on Codashop

With presence in over 60 countries, Codashop serves about half of the world’s largest mobile game publishers by revenue. End users can buy app and game credits as well as vouchers on the platform, which works directly with the publishers of Mobile Legends, PUBG Mobile, Free Fire, and other big-name games.

To put Codashop in perspective, the platform was visited more than 1 billion times in 2020. It has a single API integration that enables customers to transact using over 300 payment methods for the content they want to consume.

“We really focus on the unique needs of digital content publishers who are trying to monetize that content around the world,” says Davidson. The platform helps its clients collect and pay local taxes and also takes responsibility for foreign exchange mechanics for fund repatriation.

Coda Payments has two other offerings – its original Codapay product and xShop – which both complement Codashop.

Coda Payments co-founder and executive chairman Neil Davidson/ Photo credit: Coda Payments

Codapay helps publishers generate more revenue for their content by enabling them to accept over 200 local payment methods around the world on their own websites. The company says that it has helped publishers double their revenue by giving their customers access to the payment methods that they want to use. Codapay supports payment methods such as GrabPay and ShopeePay, as well as India’s Unified Payments Interface.

On the other hand, xShop is a white-label solution that provides the Codashop catalog of games and gaming currencies to its clients. The service enables publishers to sell their content on popular super apps and ecommerce platforms.

A self-sufficient business