TIA Startup Arena winner raises $1.6m to advance ‘family banking’

(From left): Little Wallet’s co-founders Rahul Sharma, Phoebe Tran, and Tech in Asia COO Maria Li at Tech in Asia Startup Arena 2022./ Photo credit: Tech in Asia

Southeast Asia has some of the lowest financial literacy rates in the world, according to the S&P Global FinLit Survey. Despite this gap, most traditional banks do not provide specific services for family financial management, especially for kids and teens.

Little Wallet, a Singapore-based fintech company and one of the winners of Tech in Asia Startup Arena 2022, aims to provide these services with an all-in-one money management platform designed for families, and it has just raised a funding round.

Funding details

• Funding amount: $1,600,000
• Lead investors: Tikaani Partners
• Stage: Pre-seed

Its platform offers features such as earning, saving, budgeting, spending, and giving. Users can connect it with a debit card, companion card, or wearable device.

The startup says it wants to deviate from traditional banking brands with the goal to appeal to users aged 13 to 18, and even as young as children from six to 12 years old.

“We recognize the opportunity in the SEA region and plan to invest our first round of funding in scaling up our operations and engineering teams, as well as marketing and strategic partnerships,” co-founder Phoebe Tran said in a statement.

She added that Little Wallet plans to launch its services in other Southeast Asian markets with Visa as one of its partners.

See also: Winners and losers of SG and India’s novel PayNow-UPI linkage