Fintech firm Oriente secures $20m to bolster services in the Philippines

Hong Kong-based fintech firm Oriente announced it has secured US$20 million in debt funding from local multiasset investment company Silverhorn Group.

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

The lending company plans to use the facility, which can increase to up to US$50 million, to grow its loan book. It will also enable Oriente to extend the reach of its digital credit and pay-later solutions in the Philippines through Cashalo, its fintech platform in the archipelago.

In less than 18 months, the Cashalo app has grown its user base to over 2.5 million customers after being downloaded more than 6.5 million times, Oriente said. The company also claims that the app has grown over 20% month on month since its launch.

According to data from professional services network KPMG and the World Bank, only 33% of Southeast Asian small- and medium-sized enterprises have access to loans or lines of credit. Research by the Asian Development Bank estimates that addressing this gap could increase gross domestic product by 9% to 14% in the region and generate more than US$380 billion in annual banking revenues globally.

“As we enter the next stage of growth on our mission to helping ignite economic opportunity for tens of millions of consumers and microenterprises, the support we receive from our debt partners is critical,” said Oriente co-founder Geoffrey Prentice.

Prentice, co-founder and former chief strategy officer at Skype, established Oriente in 2017 alongside BlackPine Private Equity founder Lawrence Chu and Oriente CEO Hubert Tai, former founding chief technology officer for financial assets trading platform LU.com,

Using technologies such as AI, machine learning, and data science, Oriente builds solutions that provide real-time credit scoring as well as digital and online-to-offline lending services across Southeast Asia.

Apart from Cashalo, the company also operates Indonesian peer-to-peer lending firm Finmas, which recently secured a business license from the country’s Financial Services Authority to operate as a fintech lending platform.