Vietnamese e-wallet and digital financial services platform MoMo announced on January 16 it has received Series C investment led by Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity firm.
MoMo did not reveal any figures but affirmed that the new funding equips the company with substantial resources to significantly expand its footprint and realise its ambition of developing millions of payments points throughout the country.
The company’s performance has been underpinned by the rapid uptake of mobile payments as the country’s digitally-savvy population embraces the convenience of making cashless transactions on their mobile devices, both online and offline.
A Momo report noted that it now serves nearly 10 million users on its e-wallet platform and was the country’s most downloaded e-wallet app in 2018. Transaction volumes grew more than three-fold over the course of last year.
The company works with than 10,000 partners across all verticals to serve the essential payment needs of Vietnamese customers, such as consumer finance, insurance, money transfers, utility payments, entertainment, e-commerce, shopping, transportation, and F&B.
Momo allows customers to not only buy telco credits, send money, or pay their bills, but also buy movie tickets, book airline tickets, buy insurance policies, and pay for goods and services at more than 100,000 payment points around the country, including popular chain stores such as Circle K, Ministop, and FPT Shop.
For its achievements, MoMo was named as a top fintech company in 2018 and is the only Vietnamese firm in both KPMG’s Fintech100 and the IFC’s Financial Inclusion in the Digital Age project.
Pham Thanh Duc, CEO of Momo, said that Warburg Pincus’s capital and support has been game-changing for the company. “The company posted its largest ever transaction volume and number of active users in 2018,” he added. “We are excited to continue working with them to build out the country’s digital payments infrastructure, utilise technology to bolster financial inclusion, and provide ordinary Vietnamese with unprecedented levels of access to digital financial services at their fingertips.”
Nguyen Manh Tuong, MoMo’s Executive vice Chair, believes that Vietnam is entering its next stage of growth, which will require a robust and inclusive financial services ecosystem. “MoMo is committed to realising that vision by accelerating the adoption of digital payments and enabling equal opportunities for all Vietnamese to benefit from the digital economy,” Tuong said.
MoMo will launch its largest-ever “Lucky New Year” campaign for the Lunar New Year (Tet) period in partnership with more than 40 brands, which would allow users to not only exchange digital gifts between families and friends but also receive attractive rewards that are redeemable at MoMo’s partners.
The campaign follows the massive success of its inaugural red envelope programme last year, which became the most viral digital gifting campaign in the country with over 3 million digital red envelopes exchanged between MoMo’s users. Actual red envelopes are typically exchanged between people during Tet.
MoMo will also continue to invest in technology, including in areas such as AI, security, and Big Data capabilities, in order to deliver innovative financial services solutions and serve the unmet needs of consumers.
