Japan’s GMO Payment Gateway deepens alliance with Neweb through $1M investment

Today GMO Payment Gateway, an online payment subsidiary of Japan’s GMO Internet, announced that it has doubled-down on its alliance with Taiwan’s Neweb online payment service, investing a further US$1 million into the partnership that began last year. GMO says that the expanded investment will be used to build out the company’s presence in East Asia and introduce Neweb to Japan.

GMO Payment Gateway first teamed up with Neweb back in 2014, but the Japanese company has been active outside of East Asia too. It has local companies in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand (as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan) that it uses to build payment solutions for Japanese ecommerce companies wishing to enter foreign markets. At the same time, its GMO Global Payment Fund – which is where today’s US$1M investment came from – invests in local payment-related startups. The partnership and this follow-on investment in Neweb is a solid indication that GMO likes what it sees in Neweb and expects the company to be able to expand throughout the region.

This new US$1M investment is just the tip of the iceberg, though. A couple of months ago, GMO raised US$65M from multinational banking giant Mitsui Sumitomo to strengthen its GMO Payment Gateway ecommerce payment solution and aid the startups that it serves. GMO still has millions of dollars to invest in epayment companies across East and Southeast Asia, and this Neweb move may just be one among many. Thailand’s 2C2P, which GMO has invested in several times already, could also be in line for a new cash infusion for example.