Heaptalk, Jakarta — Singapore’s fintech Surfin obtained a new injection of US$12.5 million from Insignia Ventures Partners. This Series A funding comes concurrently with Surfin’s accomplishment of serving 60 million lives across eight countries on three continents, with roughly US$2.7 billion in cumulative transactions.
The firm considered this investment to be Surfin’s first round of external funding. The company has been bootstrapped since its inception, and lending is done out of its balance sheet with no third-party debt.
Established in 2017, Surfin launched consumer lending before expanding across financial services such as payments/remittances, credit card issuance, and wealth management. Using Al and analytics, Surfin strives to provide an ecosystem of transparent and innovative financial services to the growing, underbanked middle class. The company has expanded its business reach in Indonesia (2018), Vietnam (2018), Mexico (2018), Philippines (2018), Nigeria (2019), Kenya (2019), India (2021), Uganda (2022), and Australia (2023).
As the firm broadened its presence over the years, Surfin has accumulated numerous licenses across multiple jurisdictions. The firm obtained P2P, mutual fund distribution, remittance, and payment gateway (incoming) licenses in Indonesia.
Surfin’s wave of providing innovative financial technology
In 2023, Surfin’s wealth management product, Ayovest, was released as a mutual fund trading platform for the rising generation in the archipelago. This product enables users to invest starting from Rp10,000. Ayovest has been operating effectively and licensed by Indonesia’s OJK since last year.
On the other hand, Surfin’s credit card business was established in Mexico, “Sufinc”. Sufinc was born out of a partnership with Visa for a credit card to bolster Surfin’s consumer finance presence in Central America. Monthly expenses can be paid at any point within the year, businesses can go months without paying interest, and there are no annual commissions. This partnership with Visa allows Sufinc to be accepted at any establishment online worldwide.
Surfin’s ecosystem is powered by a unified credit scoring engine powered by AI and data analytics. This core technology has allowed Surfin to sustainably lend at scale across diverse geographies and unlocks the company’s entry into other use cases.
Founding Manager Partner of Insignia Ventures, Yinglan Tan, conveyed, “Surfin company leverages the wave of AI transforming the industry to deliver more equitable credit access to the underbanked. In a highly competitive and challenging space, this combination of proven multi-market entry with licensed multi-jurisdiction products and robust risk management capabilities positions them in a unique place to scale. Their operational track record is more impressive, considering they have been bootstrapped thus far.”
