Startup CardUp Targets Check Payments With $1.7M Funding Round

Singapore-based startup CardUp is going after check and cash payments after raising about $1.7 million in new funding led by Sequoia India.

The round, reported today by TechCrunch, will enable the startup to further expand its place as the “middleman” of business payments: the startup’s payments platform facilitates card payments to organizations that don’t traditionally accept them, such as landlords or government payments.

The new funding will allow the company to further focus on those businesses that need to rely on check, cash payments, or transfers to pay these organizations. CardUp is focusing on SMEs in its native Singapore for now, though it will look to other countries, founder and chief executive officer Nicki Ramsay told TechCrunch.

Ramsay, an American Express alum, told TechCrunch:

Globally, 124 trillion in business payments is still going via cash, transfer or check, and only 1% of that is currently captured on cards. Right now we’re very encouraged by the strong user adoption we’ve seen, validating the need for our service locally, and are therefore focused on capturing this large local market opportunity, but of course the pain point we are solving for SMEs is universal, and so new markets are on the horizon.

CardUp has seen an average monthly user growth rate of 41% since its launch in 2016, the company told TechCrunch.

Read more at TechCrunch and Tech in Asia.