Just a few months from their Finovate debut, Singapore-based social payments enabler fastacash has raised another $4 million in funding. The capital from new and existing investors takes the company’s total to $8.5 million.
Participating in the round were Jagdish Chanrai, principal of Kelwalram Chanrai Group, and Golden Oriole Investments, as well as other current investors.
The company said it plans to use the new capital to help fund expansion. fastacash chairman and CEO Vince Tallent cited partnerships with payments companies in India, Kenya, Russia, and Vietnam as examples of the kind of global presence his company seeks. The investment will also help speed up product development and deployment.
From the Finovate stage in February, Vince described fastacash’s vision as making “value transfers between two end users a very simple and secure experience.” However two end users define value – money, airtime, coupons – fastacash’s technology lets the sender and the receiver choose the channel and make the exchange. That channel could be Facebook, Instagram, Skype, Whatsapp, or any number of other social networks and messaging platforms.
By letting end users attach digital content ranging from pictures to audio to video, the appeal of the platform ranges from everyday transfers of value between individuals to banks, international remittance companies and others who want to, as Vince put it, send “marketing messages as a value transfer.”
Founded in April 2012 and based in Singapore, fastacash made its Finovate debut this February in London as part of FinovateEurope. See a demo of the company’s technology here.