SpherePay, Singapore's homegrown mobile payment app, announced on Tuesday it completed its fundraising exercise, which saw the company raise over $10 million, according to Media OutReach.
It has not disclosed the name of investors due to ongoing developments.
With this latest round of funding and the affirmation of its strategic partnership with oBike since last December, SpherePay is well-placed to be one of the top three payment platforms in Southeast Asia. It currently serves over five million users and has more than 10,000 merchants in the region.
Last year SpherePay announced its strategic partnership with oBike, Southeast Asia's largest bike sharing operator. In a move that is set to deepen its partnership, SpherePay will integrate oBike's operating system into its app. This means that SpherePay will be able to support all services available on oBike's app, including its geofencing feature and crowdsourcing delivery service oBike Flash.
"Since our inception last year, we have been making good progress to ensure that SpherePay will be one of the most highly utilised mobile payment apps in the region. Our completion of the recent fundraising, coupled with the strategic partnership with oBike, is testament to the commitment and rapid development of SpherePay. This partnership with oBike saw an immediate acquisition of over 5.0 million users in South East Asia and we are putting together new features that will bring even greater benefits to all our users," said Mr Joseph Chen, CEO of SpherePay.
With the launch of this integration which will complete by March 2018, users of oBike and SpherePay will be able to access both services on their preferred app. oBike users can now log in to SpherePay from their oBike account. Similarly, SpherePay users can scan, unlock oBike bicycles, and even book for deliveries via SpherePay.
Upcoming enhancements of SpherePay will include new features like merchant deals listing which will be supported by an LBS (Location Based Services). This means that users will be notified of a merchant deal happening near them. This new function will also enable merchants to list their own products and promotions on the SpherePay app at their convenience. Other new functions that will be introduced on SpherePay will be the addition of payment capabilities such as booking of events, courses and classes, paying for bills such as telco and utility bills and booking of tickets such as cinema, flight or hotels in the later stage of developments.
SpherePay recently announced its plan on regional expansion to Indonesia and Thailand last December. The company has now confirmed a bigger plan to rapidly expand throughout South East Asia covering Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia. The target to complete this expansion plan is by second quarter of 2018.
