Hong Kong’s EMQ to focus on business remittances following $20m round

Hong Kong-based fintech startup EMQ said it has closed a US$20 million series B funding round led by global early to growth stage-focused VC firm WI Harper Group.

A slew of new and existing investors including Abu Dhabi Capital, AppWorks, DG Ventures, Hard Yaka, Intudo Ventures, January Capital, Quest Venture Partners, SparkLabs Taipei, Vectr Fintech Partners, and VS Partners also participated in the round, according to a statement.

EMQ CEO Max Liu / Photo credit: EMQ

Founded in 2014, EMQ provides a fast and affordable cross-border settlement solution for businesses around the world. The company said it built its infrastructure to be easily deployed across multiple industries for a broad range of services, such as ecommerce, merchant settlement, procurement, remittance, and payroll.

Currently, EMQ’s network spans across Asia Pacific, Africa, Europe, and North America, with licenses in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Indonesia. The company was also accepted into Taiwan’s regulatory sandbox by the region’s Financial Supervisory Commission.

What are its future plans? Max Liu, co-founder and CEO of EMQ, told Tech in Asia that while most of its volume comes from consumer remittances, EMQ is planning to ramp up its business remittances segment globally.

See also: The startup helping Tencent capture a share of Southeast Asia’s remittances market

With that, the startup looks to use the new funds to bolster its cross-border solutions and compliance capabilities.

“We are onboarding enterprise customers around the world and process cross-border payments across 80 key markets,” Liu said. “We are also focusing on increasing our regulatory footprint in key markets such as the UK, EU, Japan, and Australia.”

He also noted that recently, the company has ramped up its network across Asia, Africa, and Europe and is now expanding across the Americas. However, the company expects China and Southeast Asia to be its biggest markets for business transactions.

How much traction has it gotten? Since it’s series A raise in 2017, the company has been focused on building up its financial settlement infrastructure to support a wide range of front-end use cases.

With that in place, EMQ has rolled out an enterprise payment solution with same-day settlement capabilities across its key markets. “We have seen a healthy ramp-up on these services, [and we] expect this to contribute to 50% of our gross transaction value in 2021,” Liu said.

EMQ has also increased its licenses from two to five. It was able to bump up its payout capability from four markets to over 80, and saw its historical trailing annual transaction volume increase by 70x.

The head chief also said it has significantly strengthened its coverage in China to over 130 banks, further increasing its capabilities in business remittances.