Fintech Startup Aspire Closes $100 Million Round

The fintech company Aspire just closed a $100 million series C round. The capital raise was led by Lightspeed and Sequoia Capital SEA and included participation from PayPal Ventures, Tencent, LGT Capital Partners, and existing backers.

Founded by Italians Andrea Baronchelli and Giovanni Casinelli in 2018 from within Y Combinator, Aspire offers international payments, business cards, debt and credit management, and other financial services. The company said its total payments volume has grown 3-fold to $12 billion, with more than 15 thousand customers across Southeast Asia. The startup’s flagship product is AspireAccount, which offers cash flow management and B2B payment services to digital merchants.

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Aspire’s sprint to Asia

The brainchild of Andrea Baronchelli and Giovanni Casinelli in 2018 in Singapore, Aspire already has a presence in major SEA countries and aims to be an “All in one, financial operating system” a true agency system that helps small and medium-sized businesses manage all financial services, while also helping with the company’s incorporation phase, all online, integrated and fast.

Aspire was initially incubated by Ycombinator, a U.S.-based company, and later opened its doors to a number of multi-cultural investors with diverse professional backgrounds. And it is precisely the multicultural factor that stands out in the Aspire team, which currently consists of more than 400 people of whom 42 percent are women, from 14 nationalities, and with 20 languages spoken in total.

“From the provision of real-time financial data, to fast and transparent cross-border payments, to empowering business teams with world-class spend management capabilities to move quickly and act right: we look forward to empowering every business, large or small, with our state-of-the-art financial tools,” said Andrea Baronchelli , co-founder and CEO of Aspire. With the capital injection, Aspire plans to enhance its financial product offerings throughout Southeast Asia. Prior to this round, the startup raised nearly $200 million.

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(Featured image by Adeolu Eletu via Unsplash)

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