YouTrip raises $50m as travel bounces back

YouTrip co-founders Arthur Mak (left) and Caecilia Chu / Photo credit: YouTrip

YouTrip, a multicurrency digital payments platform focused on Southeast Asia, has secured US$50 million in its series B fundraise, which was led by new investor Lightspeed. With its latest round, YouTrip has raised over US$100 million in total since inception.

YouTrip has been EBITDA profitable as of April this year and is primed for more growth, co-founder and CEO Caecilia Chu said in an interview with Tech in Asia.

YouTrip offers a mobile financial platform that allows users to make payments in over 150 currencies with no extra fees and hidden charges. In 2022, it launched YouBiz, a corporate card and spend management platform for SMEs and startups.

In the last two years, YouTrip has tripled its user base and quadrupled the number of card spending it processes globally. As such, the company is processing close to US$10 billion in annualized total payment volume, Chu estimates.

According to the co-founder, this growth comes off the back of a post-pandemic recovery in travel and “strong” market fit for YouTrip’s services.

She added that YouBiz, in particular, has seen a sizable uptick in both usage and contribution to the overall business. Since its launch, YouBiz has grown to serve more than 3,000 businesses – a figure that YouTrip says it is on track to double by next year.

“We see vast opportunities in the B2B payment sector as businesses become increasingly global and require cross-border payment solutions that help them accelerate their growth,” Chu says.

However, this space is highly competitive, with players such as Airwallex and Sunrate also vying to serve businesses’ payment needs.

SEA and AI to the future

YouTrip will use the newly raised capital to invest in more tech, expand its regional team, and launch in new markets across Southeast Asia in the coming months.

Areas of interest include Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Chu said the response that YouTrip got from users in Singapore and Thailand gave it the confidence to tackle these neighboring countries.

Specifically, its Singapore-registered business grew its revenue by 49% in FY 2022 (for the period ending March 2022) to about US$2.6 million, according to VentureCap Insights. This reverses a reduction in the financial year before that, which was primarily due to initial fall in economic activity in the earlier days of the pandemic.

It also saw improved cash flow from operations, although losses from continuing operations grew by roughly 50% to US$10.1 million. However, Chu clarified that the unit domiciled in the city-state does not represent YouTrip’s entire business.