Vietnam e-wallet MoMo raises series D led by Warburg Pincus, Goodwater Capital

MoMo, one of Vietnam’s top payment apps that claims to serve 23 million users in the country, announced the closing of its series D round co-led by Warburg Pincus and Goodwater Capital, securing its position as one of the most well-funded tech firms in Vietnam. 

This round also included the participation of new investors Kora Management and Macquarie Capital, as well as existing shareholders Affirma Capital and Tybourne Capital Management. 

Photo credit: MoMo

According to MoMo, 25% of the new funding will be used to support tech startups in Vietnam through MoMo Innovation Ventures, the company’s new fund. The capital raise is also a much-needed boost for MoMo to continue its fight in a brutal fintech war in the country, where 39 e-wallet providers are battling it out to dominate a market that encompasses nearly 100 million people. Tech in Asia previously did a deep dive into this topic. 

The Vietnamese firm did not disclose the size of this new round, but it’s believed to be within the range of the company’s previous US$100 million series C round two years ago, which was also led by Warburg Pincus. Before raising this series D round, MoMo — who also counts Standard Chartered and Goldman Sachs among its roster of investors — had raised a total of US$132.7 million. 

The firm was founded in 2007 by a group of Vietnamese founders. The company, which has been known to follow the Alipay model, debuted its e-wallet services in 2010 and has gradually expanded and diversified its offerings to be on par with other super-app competitors.

The startup claimed that it has reached 23 million users and has 120,000 MoMo-accepted points across the country. According to estimates by App Annie, the top four mobile wallet apps in the first half of 2020 by downloads in Vietnam were: MoMo, ViettelPay, AirPay, and ZaloPay.

Unlike its e-wallet competitors such as Moca (used within Grab’s ecosystem) and ZaloPay, which can leverage existing users from its core services of social media and messaging, MoMo does not have an anchor use case and has been known for aggressively acquiring users and merchants through discounts and marketing. 

On the e-payment side, MoMo also competes with VNPay, which claims to serve over 15 million monthly active users who can use the service to transfer money, pay bills, top up mobile credits, and pay at offline merchants through its QR code. VNPay has been unofficially crowned as Vietnam’s latest unicorn, according to the e-Conomy SEA 2020 report by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company.

See also: Vietnam’s newest unicorn has been hiding in plain sight 

In an email interview with Tech in Asia, MoMo co-founder Ba Diep Nguyen, previously said that the company has a clear advantage, as it has locked in “a lot of big offline merchants,” ranging from the country’s largest convenience stores and supermarket chains to coffee shop chains.