Economy
KPay Secures Record USD55 Million, Marking 2024’s Largest Series A Fundraise Globally in the Payments Sector
KPay strengthens its position as the leading regional platform for merchants to simplify financial management and streamline business operations. The investment by Apis Growth Markets Fund III and Apis Global Growth Fund III will accelerate KPay’s trajectory to support one million merchants across Asia in the next five years
HONG KONG/SINGAPORE – Media OutReach Newswire – 3 December 2024 – KPay Group (KPay), a one-stop financial management and business operations platform, today announced the successful completion of its first institutional funding round, raising a record USD 55 million, the largest Series A globally in the payments sector in 2024[1].
This landmark investment was led by Apis Growth Markets Fund III and Apis Global Growth Fund III (both of which Apis Partners LLP serves as the portfolio manager for), validating KPay’s strategic vision, market leadership and ambitious growth trajectory. UK-based Apis Partners is an ESG and Impact-native global private equity asset manager which manages or advises on total assets under management of USD 2.3 billion. This investment will not only accelerate KPay’s existing trajectory but also provide the basis for its aggressive expansion plans across Emerging Asia.
With fintech funding in Asia Pacific hitting a six-year low[2] in H1 2024, KPay’s record-breaking Series A stands out as a testament to the company’s execution excellence and opportunity set ahead. The successful funding also demonstrates investors’ appetite to back companies – like KPay – which have a proven playbook to drive expansion across Asia and can do so in a capital efficient manner. Notably, up until this Series A round, the company had yet to raise venture capital funding to deliver growth.
The investment from Apis Partners includes a commitment by KPay to expand its presence across key Asian economies, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and more. KPay will leverage the capital to drive both organic growth and strategic mergers and acquisitions. This partnership aligns closely with the shared vision of Apis and KPay to drive meaningful change, recognizing the critical role of SMEs, which account for 55.8%[3] of total employment in Asia, and in turn acknowledges that supporting SME growth fosters broader economic development and strengthens regional economies.
Founded just over three years ago, KPay has achieved a remarkable 166% revenue CAGR during this period, operating across Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. The company has built a one-stop solution to facilitate the financial, operational and digital transformation for merchants of all sizes, and is already serving more than 45,000 merchants in the region. With its open-architecture ecosystem, KPay currently partners with over 150 SaaS providers, banking institutions, and financial services firms and plans to double its partnerships to support even more businesses across Asia in their financial and digital transformation journey.
Davis Chan, Co-founder and CEO of KPay, says, “I am incredibly proud of this financial milestone our team has achieved. We are excited to use this funding to not only expand our existing markets’ SME merchant base, but also broaden our reach into new merchant industry categories, merchants of all sizes, and merchants operating in other underserved markets across Asia. This will bring us closer to our ambitious goal of supporting one million merchants over the next five years”
Christopher Yu, President and CFO of KPay, adds, “Securing this funding gives us financial strength and flexibility to enhance our product innovation, go-to-market speed, customer experience, and operational excellence. All of this is with our merchants in mind, in making it even simpler, smarter, and more cost-effective for them when using KPay’s services. To do this, we need to continue to attract the best partners and global talent to join us, who share the same ambition to work alongside us to achieve the company’s vision and mission.”
Matteo Stefanel, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Apis Partners, comments: “We are thrilled to lead this investment in KPay, a unique company demonstrating remarkable growth under the leadership of seasoned third-time founders and an exemplary management team. As one of the most active global fintech investors in growth-stage companies, Apis is eager to bring our domain expertise to support this exciting phase of KPay’s journey. With this combination of both financial strength and execution excellence, we look forward to a long-term partnership with KPay, to support their regional expansion, and spearheading next-gen financial management solutions in Asia’s diverse payments and software sector.”
Udayan Goyal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Apis Partners, adds: “As a financial services-focused investor, we recognise the unique value KPay brings to the market through its commitment to empowering merchants with accessible, impactful financial tools. This investment aligns perfectly with our ESG and Impact mandate to foster sustainable and inclusive growth within the financial sector, promoting the democratisation of finance, embedded finance and the deepening of the digital economy. We look forward to supporting KPay as it scales, helping the company deliver meaningful financial solutions across Asia.”
Hashtag: #KPay #KConnect #KFund #SME #funding #fundraising #privateequity #payin #payout #finance #apispartners
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
About KPay Group
KPay Group (“KPay”) is a leading fintech company dedicated to empowering businesses of all sizes with simple, smart, seamless and secure technology solutions. Serving over 45,000 merchants across Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan, KPay is building a one-stop platform to support merchants in financial management, business operations and digital transformation across Asia, unlocking new growth potential for businesses. For the latest updates, follow us on 
LinkedIn or visit our website at 
www.kpay-group.com.
About Apis Partners
The Apis Group (“Apis”) is an ESGI-native private equity and venture capital asset manager that supports growth-stage financial services and technology businesses globally by providing them with catalytic growth equity capital. Collectively Apis, through its team of around 40 professionals with deep industry expertise, manages or advises on total AUM of c.US$2.3 billion.
Headquartered in London, Apis has representation in seven countries globally. Apis is highly conscious of the impact that the provision of growth capital for financial services and technology businesses in global markets can achieve, and as such, financial inclusion and financial wellness are core tenets of Apis’ impact investment approach. www.apis.pe
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
In the first 10 months of 2024, the aggregate foreign exchange (FX) inflows into Nigeria increased by 41 per cent on a year-on-year basis to $79.8 billion from $55.6 billion in the same period of the preceding year.
This information was revealed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) through its Economic Report for October 2024.
The apex bank disclosed that in the period under consideration, the nation recorded a 1.4 per cent decline in aggregated FX outflows to $29.84 billion from the $30.29 billion posted in the first 10 months of 2023.
As for the net forex inflows, it rose by 65.7 per cent to $46.92 billion from $28.31 billion in the corresponding period of 2023, with inflows from autonomous sources growing by 0.06 per cent to $35.82 billion from $34.4 billion, outflows from autonomous sources expanding by 195 per cent to $7.08 billion from $2.4 billion, and the net forex inflows from autonomous sources jumped by 73 per cent to $39.7 billion from $22.93 billion.
“Foreign exchange flows through the economy amounted to a net inflow of $4.86 billion, relative to $6.35 billion in September 2024. Aggregate foreign exchange inflow increased to $9.15 billion, from $8.59 billion in the preceding month.
“Similarly, foreign exchange outflow increased to $4.29 billion, from $2.24 billion in the preceding month.
“Foreign exchange inflow through the bank declined to $4.48 billion, from $5.22 billion in the preceding month, while autonomous inflow increased to $4.67 billion, from $3.37 billion in the preceding month.
“Outflow through the bank rose to $3.73 billion, from $1.84 billion, while autonomous outflow fell to $0.56 billion, from $0.40 billion in September 2024.
“Consequently, a net inflow of $4.11 billion was recorded through autonomous sources compared with $2.97 billion in September 2024, while the bank recorded a net inflow of $0.75 billion, relative to $3.38 billion in the preceding month,” parts of the report said.
It was also revealed that the CBN inflows soared by 55 per cent between January 2024 and October 2024 to $32.94 billion from $21.25 billion in the same period of the previous year, as outflows through the central bank shrank by 1.11 per cent to $25.74 billion from $26.03 billion, leaving the net FX inflow up by 556.8 per cent to $7.16 billion from -$1.09 billion.
By Adedapo Adesanya
The NASD Over-the-Counter (OTC) Securities Exchange extended its presence in the green territory with a 0.07 per cent growth on Tuesday, January 7, spurred by a gain recorded by Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS) Plc.
At the close of business yesterday, the Nigerian securities depository company increased its share price by 15 Kobo to end at N23.20 per unit compared with the previous day’s N23.05 per unit.
As a result of this, the market capitalisation of the bourse went up by N750 million to finish at N1.056 trillion like the preceding session, and the NASD Unlisted Security Index (NSI) expanded by 2.18 points to wrap the session at 3,080.29 points compared with 3,080.47 points recorded at the previous session.
The market was relatively quiet on Tuesday as investors reconsidered their exposure to unlisted securities, with the volume of transactions declining by 96.8 per cent to 59,432 units from the 1.8 million units achieved a day earlier.
In the same vein, the value of trades recorded yesterday decreased by 89.9 per cent to N2.1 million from N20.7 million, and the number of deals slumped by 79.3 per cent to six deals from 29 deals.
FrieslandCampina Wamco Nigeria Plc ended the session as the most active stock by value (year-to-date) with 1.9 million units worth N74.2 million, trailed by 11 Plc with 12,963 units valued at N3.2 million, and Industrial and General Insurance (IGI )Plc with 10.7 million units sold for N2.1 million.
IGI Plc finished the trading session as the most active stock by volume (year-to-date) with 10.6 million units valued at N2.1 million, followed by FrieslandCampina Wamco Nigeria Plc with 1.9 million units sold for at N74.2 million, and Acorn Petroleum Plc with 1.2 million units worth N1.9 million.
By Adedapo Adesanya
It was a bad day for the Nigerian Naira in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Tuesday, January 7 as its value weakened further by 0.03 per cent or 45 Kobo to trade at N1,537.03/$1, in contrast to the preceding day’s N1,536.58/$1.
Equally, the domestic currency depreciated against the British Pound Sterling in the official market yesterday by N21.60 to wrap the session at N1,924.15/£1 compared with Monday’s closing price of N1,902.55/£1 and against the Euro, it lost N15.55 to quote at N1,595.07/€1 compared with the previous day’s N1,579.52/€1.
However, in the black market, the Naira traded flat against the US Dollar during the trading session at N1,655/$1 as the spot market battles fresh FX demand pressure.
Meanwhile, ihe cryptocurrency market was largely negative as two stronger-than-expected US economic data placed pressure on digital assets’ bright early-year momentum.
Job openings for November unexpectedly rose to 8.1 million from 7.8 million the previous month, easily topping analyst estimates for a decline to 7.7 million while the ISM Services Purchasing Managers Index, a monthly gauge of the level of economic activity in the services sector, came in at 54.1 for December, overshooting expectations for 53.3 and nicely ahead of November’s 52.1.
Market analysts noted that combined together, both data shook up an already jittery market.
The biggest loser was Dogecoin (DOGE), which recorded a value depreciation of 11.6 per cent to sell at $11.6, Cardano (ADA) slid by 10.9 per cent to trade at $0.9768, Litecoin (LTC) tumbled by 10.1 per cent to $101.89, and Solana (SOL) slumped by 10.0 per cent to finish at $194.73.
Further, Ethereum (ETH) went down by 9.5 per cent to close at $3,321.85, Ripple (XRP) dropped 6.4 per cent to sell at $2.29, Bitcoin (BTC) recorded a 6.1 per cent fall to trade at $95,647.42, and Binance Coin (BNB) depreciated by 6.0 per cent to $95,647.42, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and the US Dollar Coin (USDC) remained stable at $1.00 flat.
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