Singapore’s Red Dot Payment scores $5m to help more companies do ecommerce

Singapore’s Red Dot Payment (RDP) – an online payments gateway founded by a team that includes ex-Visa and MasterCard executives – has closed a series B funding round worth US$5.2 million.

Previous investors GMO Venture Partners, Wavemaker Partners, MDI Ventures, and Skype co-founder Toivo Annus returned to up their stakes. This round also saw Singapore-based investment firm DORR Group come on board as a new backer.

Illustration: Centaine Lim

RDP acts as an online payments gateway, helping businesses to build and enhance their capability to accept payments over the internet. Beyond its core payment tech, the company is expecting more custom requests from its clients in the future.

In addition to helping clients with the traditional ways of completing electronic payments, we can also help them accept payments through PayLah, QR codes, and phone numbers.

Chief marketing officer Gurmit Singh tells Tech in Asia that RDP plans to use the series B funds to improve its ability to create bespoke solutions for businesses from different industries. This way, it can better integrate these with the various data management and legacy payments systems that these clients already have in place.

One example of this is RDP’s partnership with serviced apartment operator Ascott, for which it developed a customized payment platform using tokenization – a process which substitutes sensitive data with non-sensitive “tokens” – to keep customer credit card details secure.

“Because we are a technology-driven business, we constantly need to strengthen our technical infrastructure, upgrade it, and get more of the right expertise in to do that,” he says. “The funding will allow us to do that, in addition to growing our business in the region.”

Besides its Singapore headquarters, RDP currently has offices in Bangkok and Jakarta. The company is aiming to expand its operations in both Thailand and Indonesia, while handling business outside of these markets from Singapore.

Going cashless

While RDP remains focused on ecommerce, the company has not been deaf to the burgeoning debate on cashless over-the-counter payments in Singapore. “We’re more than happy to help businesses get on that pathway,” says Singh, who adds that RDP is currently seeking out partners to find out where it can play a role in the over-the-counter space.

In this regard, the company has already struck up a collaboration with DBS. It is working with clients to help them accept payments from DBS’s mobile wallet, PayLah. “In addition to helping clients with the traditional ways of completing electronic payments – inputting 16 digits from your Visa or MasterCard – we can also help them accept payments through PayLah, QR codes, and phone numbers,” Singh explains.

RDP previously secured series A funding “in the low millions” from Japan’s GMO and US-Singaporean VC firm Wavemaker Partners back in September 2014. It received seven-figures’ worth of follow-on capital from MDI Ventures – the VC arm of Indonesian telco Telkom – in August last year.