AMTD fund invests S$11.5m in five Singapore-based fintech startups

THE AMTD Singapore Solidarity Fund has made its first batch of investments, totalling S$11.5 million, into five Singapore-based fintech companies: Funding Societies, Active.ai, CardUp, TranSwap and PolicyPal.

The Singapore fund is part of the AMTD Asean Solidarity Fund Group, which has an initial capital of S$50 million. The regional fund aims to support and anchor fintechs registered on the API Exchange platform in Asean countries during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a press statement on Monday, AMTD said that the S$11.5 million was doled out through a variety of investment structures including equities, convertible notes, venture debt, warrants and options.

Apart from financial support, AMTD will offer these fintech startups open access to its digital platform and SpiderNet ecosystem to help them maximise their user experience and digital offerings to Asian consumers as well as small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The Asean fund was established by AMTD Group's Singapore-based subsidiary AMTD Digital, the group's charitable organisation, and non-profit entity Asean Financial Innovation Network (AFIN).

Supriya Sen, AFIN independent director and chairman of its investment committee, said the five startups were selected from more than 40 applications sent by companies focusing on use cases such as payments, insurtech, regtech, SME lending and digital assets.

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Funding Societies is a digital financing platform for SMEs in South-east Asia. It is licensed in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, and backed by Sequoia India and SoftBank Ventures Asia, among others.

Active.ai is Singapore-based fintech company with subsidiaries in the US and India. It uses artificial intelligence to help banks and credit unions create virtual assistants.

CardUp enables the payment or collection of big expenses using credit cards where cards are not accepted, such as to pay rent, tax, invoices and payroll.

TranSwap is a cross-border payments platform for businesses to manage and execute payments globally while reducing foreign-exchange costs and complexity. It is licensed in Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia.

Meanwhile, insurtech company PolicyPal works with global insurance companies and is supported by 500 Startups, PayPal and angel investor Koh Boon Hwee.