Fintech start-up Clik Payment (Cambodia) Plc. (“Clik”) is aiming for a launch as its endeavors to arrange additional financing to assist with a $2 million regulatory deposit required by the central bank.
The Phnom Penh-based payment aggregator has already raised over $3.9 million of investment since 2016 making it Southeast Asia’s largest-ever Seed round funding for mobile payments, loyalty programs, data visualization, business intelligence, and cloud data services.
Clik’s business model is to enhance revenues for merchants and financial institutions by fast-tracking their journeys to digitalization. On top of transforming smartphones to accept card, wallet, bank and national systems like ‘Bakong’.
In addition, Clik will also provide banking-grade authentication (eKYC), loyalty and marketing solutions enabling merchants to improve their customer experience and drive repeat purchasing.
Two of the major financiers of Clik were Openway, a global vendor of payment processing platforms and Poems Pte Ltd, the investment holding company of Singapore financial house Phillip Capital Pte Ltd. Among other participants were several global angel investors, a third of which are Cambodia-based.
The company is in the process of raising the necessary funding for the $2 million cash deposit required for its Payment Service Provider (PSP) licensee granted by the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC). Funding efforts which the company says were delayed by the COVID 19 pandemic.
Matthew Tippetts, Chief Executive Officer of Clik told Cambodia Investment Review that, “Unfortunately, we [Clik] have been severely delayed with our fundraising efforts with the COVID crisis, which has in due course delayed our launch”.
“We are confident that we can arrange the additional capital required soon and also believe the strong vaccination drive by the government has put Cambodia in a great position for a quick economic rebound from the pandemic,” he said.
Cambodia’s payments service providers have been transforming after the central bank expand its own digital payment application now claimed to register over 200,000 users. With some payment companies already diversifying their business model.
The mobile application ‘Bakong’ was launched last year and is Cambodia’s first integrated payment system and was designed to allow customers to perform several functions, such as using an e-wallet and making mobile payments, online transactions, and financial applications.
Cambodia has a rapidly developing financial technology sector with The Cambodian Association of Finance and Technology (CAFT) and the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia (AmCham) joining forces this month.
The two associations held a working lunch outlining current issues facing the sector as they agreed to tangible actions signing a Memorandum of Understating.
Some of the topics discussed were the need for greater access to ‘fair deal capital’ for young startups and help with formal registration requirements as well as catering to foreign companies engaging in e-commerce here that now must comply with new requirements and tax legislation.
The Kingdom’s digital payment market size value has not been verified however industry estimates vary between $10 – $20 billion annually.
