SINGAPORE-headquartered fintech company Silot has raised some US$2.87 million from investors Arbor Ventures and Eight Roads Ventures with the completion of its pre-series A funding.

Arbor Ventures is a global early-stage venture capital firm, while Eight Roads Ventures is the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International.

This recent injection of funds comes just nine months after the startup bagged an initial seed funding of US$800,000 from China's ZhenFund, marking the angel investor's first investment in South-east Asia.

In a press statement on Monday, Silot said this new money will be used mainly to fuel the firm's expansion in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and other markets in the region.

Said co-founder and managing partner of Arbor Ventures, Wei Hopeman: "The Silot team has strong market knowledge, and the ability to engage and partner with well-known financial institutions through its end-to-end solutions and technological integration. We believe Silot will play a leading role within the fast moving, dynamic development of mobile payments and new technology adoption in South-east Asia, and potentially around the globe."

Silot's founder and CEO, Andy Li said: "With product and technology at the core, Silot embraces the cashless revolution by actively building a fintech eco-system that serves the purpose of providing quality, diversified financial services to many institutions."

Prior to setting up Silot, Mr Li headed global expansion for technology firms such as Baidu and Kingsoft.

The fintech startup, which also has a research and development centre in Beijing, added that technology will play an even bigger role in financial services in the future, with financial institutions (FIs) increasingly investing in digital transformation.

According to KPMG, investment for fintech in Singapore hit S$83.3 million in the second quarter last year. And Silot is of the view that FIs will have to upgrade their current banking infrastructures in order to retain long-term competitiveness and adapt to evolving customers needs.

The fintech startup now provides its proprietary Silot Banking Platform (SBP) that "connects the silos of payments, on-boarding, operations and anti-fraud or anti-money laundering".

In addition, the SBP is backed with the Silot Connect blockchain solution, which empowers banks and partners with secured data sharing and a financial eco-system that can significantly lower operational costs in due diligence and know your customer solutions, Silot said.

It added that data collected by the SBP can be further applied to identify financial loan opportunities, and risks in small and medium sized enterprises.