Krungsri Finnovate leads latest funding round in Omise

By Digital News Asia September 28, 2017

One of the biggest start-up investments made by a Thai financial institution’s CVC
Omise will be able to help boost Krungsri’s payment business in Thailand

Krungsri Finnovate leads latest funding round in Omise

KRUNGSRI Finnovate, a subsidiary of Krungsri (Bank of Ayudhya) and member of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), announced on Sept 28 the completion of a Series B plus round into Omise, a Thai online payments startup.

With Omise’s expertise in online payment and blockchain technology, Krungsri plans to adopt the technology to support its online payment services for greater customer experience.

Krungsri Finnovate managing director Sam Tanskul said, “This round of funding into Omise marks the second investment of Krungsri Finnovate this year and also it is one of the biggest start-up investments made by a Thai financial institution’s CVC.

“As a subsidiary of a leading financial institution, we have seen growth opportunities in online payment as well as a solid expansion of Omise’s transaction volume.

“We also realised that opportunities abound for Omise to tap the full potential of e-commerce in Southeast Asia and offer the payment solutions across the region.”

“With Omise’s expertise in online payment and blockchain technology (OmiseGO), Krungsri will accelerate the adoption of the online payment technology.

“As part of a long-term plan, OmiseGO, a blockchain-based financial technology focusing on digital, real-time value transfers and payments, could potentially support the development of our digital products and services such as KMA, Di-wallet, and U-Choose,” Sam added.

The completion of this deal brings together a strong strategic fit, enhancing each party’s respective strengths to support the growth of financial-technology innovations and the adoption of services across Southeast Asia.

By leveraging on Krungsri’s strong foothold in Thailand and MUFG’s global capabilities and connections in more than 50 countries across the world, this synergy represents another solid step in Omise’s journey to build on its foundation of payment services and underpin their base not only in Thailand, but also in other countries across the region.

With this partnership, Omise will be able to help boost Krungsri’s payment business in Thailand by providing efficient end-to-end payment solutions and features, which encourage a better checkout performance and promote seamless commerce experiences.

“The pace of innovation in the fintech space is ramping up. This deal is a great strategic fit for us to be collaborating with financial institutions like Bank of Ayudhya and MUFG to build the infrastructure and tools which will help people and businesses live better financial lives,” said Jun Hasegawa, CEO & founder of Omise and OmiseGO.

“As we set out the ground works and continue to build the platform which will facilitate the future of open payments and value exchange (OmiseGO network), we’re excited to leverage synergy of our partners and this new capital to continue to build our platform as well as scale our operations into countries across the Asia Pacific region.”

Following its Series B round in 2016, this year Omise secured another US$25 million (RM105.17 million) through an ICO for its blockchain subsidiary, OmiseGO.

Omise’s desire to pioneer practical tech innovation lead to the establishment of OmiseGO which is tasked at building the OmiseGO network, an Ethereum-based public blockchain that aims to enable financial service equity by radically decentralising value transfer and exchange.