Singapore-based Arival, a fintech firm with a licensed bank unit in the US, has partnered with Railsbank, a London-headquartered fintech company, to offer customers the option to make local payments in the city-state.
(From left:) Co-founders of Arival: Slava Solodkiy, Igor Pesin, and Jeremy Berger
The partnership will help Arival expand into the Asia-Pacific region, with Singapore considered as a highly strategic market. It will also allow startups to scale in different markets through different currencies and payment rails.
Arival was founded in 2017 as an internal venture spun out VC firm Life.Sreda. The company, , which was a contender for a digital banking license in Singapore, is led by CEO Vladislav Solodkiy, chief financial officer Igor Pesin, and chief operating officer Jeremy Berger. Arival focuses on serving higher-risk customers who usually get turned down by more traditional banks.
“Singapore has left its mark as a startup paradise,” Berger told Tech in Asia. “This [partnership] will add tremendous value to our quest in becoming a borderless bank, offering digital banking services for customers around the world that are modern yet underbanked.”
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Meanwhile, Railsbank builds application processing interface (API) for banking, payment cards, and credit products for businesses including fintech firms. Earlier this year, the company announced its launch in Australia through a tie-up with local neobank Volt.
Earlier this year, Arival’s US unit, Arival Bank International Corp, received its US-based banking license and launched its operations in the country.
Arival said it may expand its deal with Railsbank by pushing its services further into Europe and Latin America. Apart from its tie-up with Railsbank, Arival is also in active discussions with “big tech unicorns” to develop its payments system and other lines of its product suite in Singapore.
In a bid to increase its consumer base, Arival will also launch other currencies on its platform, including the British pound, in the coming months.
Arival is looking to mainly offer its services to startups from emerging industries including crypto exchanges, blockchain startups, fintech firms, and non-bank financial institutions. It has onboarded customers from over 25 countries, with the highest demand coming from US, Canada, Singapore, and UK.
It currently hold US$13 million in assets under management, and has doubled its customer base to 100 over the past month. The company said it has increased its transaction volume by 3x over the same period.
The company has raised US$10 million in venture capital funding to date from Seedinvest, Crowdcube, and Polyvalent Capital, which has invested in Uber, Marqeta, NAV.com, Fair, Coursera, 23&Me, and Digital Ocean. It is also looking to open its series A round, which is expected to close by the end of this year.
“Being live operationally is somewhat atypical for a licensed digital bank at their Series A round. In other words, our commitment to infrastructure meets our readiness to scale,” said Igor Pesin, co-founder and CFO of Arival.
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