The Paypers

According to Tech Crunch, the funding comes from Dutch venture capital company Walvis Participaties and life insurance and asset management provider Aegon N.V. This brings GoBear’s total funding so far to USD 97 million and will be used to expand its consumer financial services platform, which is currently available in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Moreover, GoBear will focus on what it calls its ‘three growth pillars’: an online financial supermarket that evolved from the company’s financial products aggregator/comparison service; an online insurance brokerage; and its digital lending business, which it recently expanded by acquiring consumer lending platform AsiaKredit.

Overall, the startup provides digital payment options to consumers who don’t have credit cards or other access to traditional credit building tools, using data points from smartphones to assess creditworthiness in markets like the Philippines, where the credit card penetration rate is less than 10%, but more than 40% of the population uses a smartphone, Tech Crunch reported.

GoBear to unfold its consumer financial services in Asian markets after USD 17 mln funding round