Cross-border payments startup Tazapay has raised $16.9 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia.

EscapeVelocity (escp.vc) and PayPal Alumni Fund were the two other investors in this funding round. Former Google and Facebook executive and angel investor Gokul Rajaram too joined as a new investor.

Existing investors Foundamental, January Capital, RTP Global and Saison Capital also participated in the latest round of funding.

The startup has raised over $18.9 million in total, including the current funding.

Tazapay plans to use the funds to further scale business across Asia and expand to other regions, including the Middle-East and Europe.

It will add more local payment methods to better serve verticals, including cross-border ecommerce, education technology (edtech), software-as-a-service (SaaS) and travel.

Founded in 2020, Singapore-based Tazapay provides businesses a full-stack payment solution, including cards and local payment methods, for cross-border payments across 170 markets.Businesses can start accepting cross-border payments through an application programming interface (API) integration with Tazapay’s platform.

At present, India is one of Tazapay’s key markets. Business-to-business (B2B) marketplace Indiamart, edtech platform Brightchamps and rewards and employee engagement platform Advantage Club figure in the list of its clientele.

“After Surge, we are thrilled to have Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia show faith and conviction in our business by leading and participating in this round. We also welcome EscapeVelocity and PayPal Alumni Fund who are joining us as new investors,” said Tazapay co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Rahul Shinghal.

The company plans to expand its real time local payment collection channels from 80 markets to above 100 by the end of this year, with this round of funding.

“Tazapay is building the payments and compliance infrastructure for cross-border commerce and services. This is a large space which is seeing another inflection point. Buyers increasingly prefer to use local real-time payments over traditional networks and businesses are keen to expand globally without going through the hassle of a local set-up,” said Aakash Kapoor, vice-president, Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia.

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