Fintech Startup YAP Raises $10 Mn For Expanding Business To Middle East, Egypt

Mumbai-based API platform YAP has raised $10 Mn in a Series B funding round led by Flourish Ventures and Omidyar Network India. This is Flourish Ventures’ first investment in embedded finance infrastructure in India.

The fintech startup’s existing investors BEENEXT, 8i Ventures and Better Capital also participated in this round.

Prior to this, YAP had raised $4.5 Mn in Series A in April 2020 led by Dirk van Quaquebeke at BEENEXT. Indigo Technologies’ Alok Mittal, Bharatpe’s Ashneer Grover, PineLab’s Amrish Rau, Jupiter’s Jitendra Gupta, and Abhishant Pant of Fintech Meetup had also participated in the Series A round. The company has raised $15 Mn to date across funding rounds.

Founded by Madhusudanan R, Muthukumar A and Prabhu R in 2014, YAP offers solutions to fintech startups to rapidly develop and roll out payment solutions. The startup supports rewards and instruments such as issuing gift cards, physical or virtual prepaid cards that its clients can customise for their user base. It also offers QR code solutions to payment companies.

It has partnered with 20 Indian banks such as Yes Bank, DCB Bank, Equitas SFB and SBM Bank for the API platform that it offers to its 200+ clients. Some of YAP’s API platform clients include Ola, PaisaBazaar, CRED, Open, Niyo, Redcarpet, Slice, among others.

YAP plans to use the latest funding to expand to international markets and strengthen its team with fresh recruitments. The company plans to expand to Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt, Vietnam, and Indonesia. It currently serves in India, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

“We are uniquely poised to cater to new cohorts of distributors as more firms embed financial services into their digital platforms. This investment allows us to strengthen our technology teams, build new capabilities as well as reach new markets across Asia,” said Madhusudanan, cofounder at YAP, in a press statement.

Indian has witnessed tremendous growth in the transactions of mobile payments in terms of value in 2020 as the world stepped in a Covid-induced lockdown. Transactions valuing 660 Mn were made using mobile phones in India, translating into 2.2% of the world’s digital payments market in 2020.

Between the fiscal year (FY) 2016 and FY2020, digital payments Volumes have grown at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 55.1%, from 593.61 Cr in the year to March 2016 to 3,434.56 Cr in the year to March 2020. While FY20 witnessed a massive surge in volumes over the previous year to 3,434.56 Cr, in value terms it registered a marginal decline of 0.9% to INR 1,623.05 lakh Cr from  INR 1,638.52 lakh Cr in FY19

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