Cross-border payment startup InstaReM racks up US$13M investment

It's raised US$18 million in the past 18 months.

Singapore-based digital cross-border payments company InstaReM has received a US$13 million investment, which will be used to drive the company’s global payment infrastructure further.
InstaReM will use the investment to build its global payment infrastructure, which has grown eight times in volume since its March 2016 funding. The funds will also be used to develop new products and licensing activities in new markets. Founded in 2014, InstaReM is licensed as a Money Services Business (MSB) in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and Canada. It powers local payments to more than 50 countries across the globe. To date, InstaReM has raised over US$18 million in the last 18 months.

The multimillion dollar investment was led by GSR Ventures, with participation from SBI-FMO Emerging Asia Financial Sector Fund (SBI-FMO Fund), Vertex Ventures, Fullerton Financial Holdings (FFH), and Global Founders Capital (GFC).

“This is an important investment for the company to propel our next phase of growth and expansion. With GSR Venture’s strong network in China and the US, coupled with SBI-FMO Fund’s strong base in Japan and other emerging markets, we believe we have found the best partners for this phase of our journey,” says Prajit Nanu, co-founder and CEO of InstaReM.

“We aim to make cross-border payments a level playing field for all operators in the ecosystem. So, regardless if our client is a bank, telco, mobile wallet or a money transfer operator (MTO) - by accessing our payment infrastructure, they are able to send payments to over 50 markets with full transparency on cost and destination amount, enabling them to compete with global players,” adds Nanu.

By Q4 2017, InstaReM notes that it plans to expand into all markets in Europe and US in addition to Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Canada. Along with the expansion into Europe, the company will be implementing a new payment system to significantly speed up Euro payment transfers from 24 hours to less than 10 seconds across 34 member countries.

“The global payments infrastructure InstaReM is building is unique in this industry and GSR Ventures is excited to join this journey,” says Jefferson Chen, Partner at GSR Ventures. GSR Ventures is a Silicon Valley and Beijing based venture capital firm focused on early-stage technology companies. GSR Ventures is the first institutional investor for a number of multi-billion dollar companies including DiDi, Qunar, ele.me, OFO, Inke, Xiaohongshu and others. GSR Ventures currently manages more than $1.5 billions and has more than 100 portfolio companies across Asia and the US.

"We are excited to partner with the InstaReM team to jointly build the leading regional cross-border digital payments platform. We look forward to plugging InstaReM into our global ecosystem of Fintech and financial service companies,” says Suramya Gupta, Fund Manager at SBI-FMO Fund. SBI-FMO Emerging Asia Financial Sector Fund Pte Ltd is a growth strategy private equity investment fund which invests in financial services and fintech sector in emerging Asia to capitalize on the high expected growth of the region.