ACCION Group Llc. announced on October 23 said it has raised a new $5 million round of funding for digital payments and blockchain start-up Coins. The company said the money would go to projects that target “unbanked individuals in the Philippines and throughout Southeast Asia.”
The Series A funding round was led by the Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund, managed by Quona Capital and also includes a number of notable investors, the company said in a statement. “In the Philippines more people have a Facebook account than a bank account,” Coins CEO Ron Hose said. “We’d like to make access to financial services as easy and approachable as getting a Facebook account.”
More than 60 percent of Southeast Asia’s population of 600 million remains unbanked and less than 5 percent have a credit card, Coins said in a statement. At the same time, mobile Internet penetration is rapidly increasing and bringing millions of people online every month. Coins has been able to capitalize on this technological shift by delivering everyday financial services through its mobile platform. To date, the company has signed up over 500,000 users.
Leveraging the blockchain has enabled Coins to connect its services to partners with a presence in over 40 countries, and offer instant, low-cost settlement of cross-border payments and remittances. For overseas workers who are currently paying 6 percent to 8 percent to send funds through companies, like Western Union, this means a savings of up to 80 percent in fees.
Founded in early 2014, Coins is a mobile-first, branchless, blockchain-based platform that provides consumers with direct access to basic financial services, such as remittances, bill payments and mobile airtime. To provide these services, Coins has partnered with a multitude of banks, financial institutions and last-mile retail outlets, spanning a network of over 22,000 cash disbursement and collection locations in the Philippines alone.