Funding Societies partners with MatchMove to widen credit access for MSMEs in Singapore

Singapore-based small and medium sized enterprise (SME) digital financing platform Funding Societies said Wednesday it has selected banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider MatchMove to offer virtual card solutions to their micro, small, and medium-size enterprises (MSME) clients in addition to their approved loans at affordable interest rates.

This partnership would solve the growing need for MSMEs to manage their digital business expenses, both parties said in a statement.

According to the statement, even though MSMEs are a key pillar of Singapore’s economy, contributing 43 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) , they face challenges in accessing affordable financing at the right time.

To overcome this, it said owners of MSMEs would often use personal credit cards to make online business payments. Using a personal credit card, in turn, leads to higher fees and transaction costs for MSME owners, while sometimes leaving them with insufficient card limits to process a business transaction.

It said Funding Societies bridges this gap by providing MSMEs in Singapore with a suite of financial solutions including affordable short-term unsecured business financing, credit lines, and expense management tools.

Using MatchMove enabled Mastercard-branded Elevate, Funding Societies will be able to extend interest free credit lines to MSMEs on the virtual cards for a period of up to 55 days, while solving the biggest problem of digital procurement for MSMEs.

Further, the MSMEs would be able to enjoy all the privileges of the Mastercard world debit card.

“MatchMove is committed to improving digital financial inclusion across the region, for individuals and businesses, and we are excited to partner with Funding Societies in taking this vision forward. The M-JIT solution is uniquely tailored allowing Funding Societies to decide on the real-time funding requests originating on the MatchMove platform with the convenience of receiving and responding to these requests on their own platform. Thus, eliminating any under or over-funding issues to manage their client’s account balances,

“We are confident that this solution will ensure better time and money management for Funding Societies while providing affordability and convenience to their MSME clients,” said MatchMove’s Chief Commercial Officer, Amar Abrol.

Meanwhile, Funding Societies Group Head of Strategy for New Business Shrawan Saraogi said providing financing solutions and resolving the financing gap to credit-worthy and currently under- served MSMEs has been core to the growth of Funding Societies.

“Our virtual card, Elevate, comes as part of our expansion into products beyond lending, and this collaboration with MatchMove and Mastercard is important in our charge at the forefront of MSME banking needs,” he added.

Funding Societies is the largest SME digital financing platform in Southeast Asia, expanding into a leading SME neobank. It is licensed and registered in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and operates in Vietnam. It is backed by SoftBank Vision Fund, SoftBank Ventures Asia, Sequoia Capital India, Alpha JWC Ventures, SMBC Bank, Samsung Ventures, BRI Ventures, Endeavor, SGInnovate, Qualgro, and Golden Gate Ventures amongst others. It provides business financing to SMEs, annualizing $1 billion disbursements in 2021.

MatchMove is a fast-growing and disruptive fintech company in digital payments and banking. The company’s proprietary Banking OS enables embedded banking and the capabilities of Spend.Send.Lend.Defend.Ascend within its clients’ existing apps. Envisioning a financially inclusive world, its solutions help enterprise clients digitalize payments and give financially underserved segments the power to move their money anytime and anywhere.

The company is licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and authorized by leading card networks to issue virtual and physical cards along with virtual wallet accounts directly to users in approved jurisdictions, or anywhere else in the world with partner banks. The firm is one of the first non-bank financial institutions (NFI) members of the FAST payments network in Singapore, thus authorized to provide faster and real-time payments to clients. The company is headquartered in Singapore with offices in India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Singapore’s Funding Societies unveils virtual card Elevate, addressing 80 percent MSME corporate credit card gap