Hong Kong fintech firm Oriente secures $50m in ongoing series B round

Digital financial services company Oriente said it has secured roughly US$50 million in its ongoing series B round, attracting a “significant commitment” from its lead investor Peter Lee, the co-chairman of property developer Henderson Land.

Cloud-based web development platform Wix.com, as well as other existing investors, also participated in the round, according to a statement.

Skype and Oriente co-founder Geoffrey Prentice / Photo credit: Seb Daly/RISE

The Hong Kong-based company said it plans to use the new funds to fuel growth in its existing markets and drive expansion into new ones, including Vietnam. It also looks to invest more in its technology infrastructure, product suites, and big-data capabilities.

In the coming months, Oriente said it will be committed to deploying its resources, infrastructure, and network as economies worldwide start to rebound following the pandemic-led economic slowdown.

Using technologies such as AI, machine learning, and data science, Oriente offers real-time credit scoring, digital credit, offline-to-online consumer finance, point-of-sale financing, as well as working capital financing for microentrepreneurs.

Last year, the company claims to have seen a 700% year-on-year increase in transactions and says it’s serving more than 4 million new clients. Right now, it currently boasts over 5 million users and more than 1,000 merchants with its two app-based ventures: Cashalo in the Philippines and Finmas in Indonesia.

“Southeast Asia’s vastly underserved merchant-consumer ecosystem has tremendous economic potential, and we are excited to power a more capable financial services infrastructure that is purpose-built to unlock this,” said Oriente co-founder Geoffrey Prentice.

Prentice, who is the co-founder and former chief strategy officer at Skype, founded Oriente in 2017 with BlackPine Private Equity founder Lawrence Chu and former LU.com founding chief technology officer Hubert Tai.

Just last month, the startup announced that it had secured US$20 million in debt funding from multiasset investment company Silverhorn Group. According to Oriente, it aims to grow its loan book with the new facility, which can increase to at most US$50 million.

In 2018, it banked US$105 million in series A money from Malaysia’s Berjaya Group, the Philippines’ JG Summit Holdings, and Indonesia’s Sinar Mas, among others.