Hello everyone,
I’m Francis, CEO and one of the co-founders of PayMongo. Since we launched last year, the team and I have been working really hard to build the modern payments infrastructure in the Philippines, enabling more and more businesses to start, grow and succeed online.
Earlier this week, we announced that PayMongo raised a $12 million Series A led by Stripe, with follow-on investments from Y Combinator and Global Founders Capital. We are also very excited to welcome a new investor, Bedrock Capital. This fresh round of financing brings the total investment we have raised to almost $15 million since launching just a little over a year ago.
I’d like to share some thoughts on what this means for our customers, our team and the future of the Philippine internet economy.
When we launched in June 2019, we’ve laid out an ambitious product roadmap that will power thousands of new businesses online. Since announcing our $2.7 million seed round in September, we have grown our monthly processing volumes to more than 50 times and onboarded thousands of new companies to the platform.
We started out as a team of young engineers and entrepreneurs, mostly failing from previous ventures and without any formal financial background trying to make our way into fintech. Many thought we had no business building a payments service; to be fair, so did we. But our goal was not to follow any existing norms. We wanted to set out a new standard on how financial products should be built.
We’ve invested in engineering robust, easy-to-integrate APIs that help businesses accelerate integration times to just a few lines of code. We’ve also built no-code products such as Links and plugins for e-commerce providers like Shopify and WooCommerce. This way, businesses can launch with zero development time. Beyond that, we’ve relentlessly iterated in delivering a fast and stress-free KYC and onboarding, a consistent checkout experience for our merchants and worry-free fraud detection technologies at no additional cost.
We’ve built many things in a year, and we’ve made them fast. But we’re just getting started.
This Series A comes at no better time. Over the last several months, as the country went into different forms of lockdowns and continues to fight the life-altering Covid-19 pandemic, more and more businesses find themselves needing scalable solutions to do commerce online. Our products and services have become not only as enablers for businesses to succeed but also as vital components to the country’s economic future, most especially in these trying times.
This new funding will be invested in expanding our products and services, as we build out a much bigger financial infrastructure. There’s still a lot of work to do: from adding more payment options to supporting new business models such as recurring payments, subscriptions and invoicing. We’re also very excited to further build up our team, which already has almost 50 smart and talented members, to help us execute on our aggressive roadmap.
We’re thrilled to have some of the smartest global investors to support us in this journey. We couldn’t wait to leverage their network and expertise to accelerate our growth. To all our investors, thank you for your continued belief and unwavering support in achieving our ambitious goals.
This journey wouldn’t have been possible without Edwin, Luis, Jaime and our incredibly talented team who continue to set new heights. I am super lucky to get to work with these fantastic people. They write chapters of how Filipino startups are built, and they perform miracles daily. To my team, I am humbled. Thank you!
Most importantly, thank you to the thousands of PayMongo merchants who trusted us with your business. We wouldn’t be where we are today without all of you. Over the next coming months, you can expect a lot of improvements, new features and amazing new products. Our goal is to make it insanely easier for your customers to pay. The team and I are working around the clock to build products, work with our partners and hear directly from you. Nothing is more inspiring about this job than hearing your stories and aspirations. We listen to your feedback, and we will continue to provide you with all the tools so you can do successful businesses online.
PayMongo exists because we believe that anyone should have the ability to start and grow amazingly successful businesses online—whether you’re in your garage starting out your ideas or a large company with thousands of new customers. Just like our story starting out last year, you don’t need to be a certain way to succeed. The future of our internet economy belongs to everyone, and we’re here to help you be part of that.
Thank you. Onwards and upwards!