Flip, an Indonesia-based fintech startup, announced today it has raised $48 million in a Series B to accelerate its growth. The funding brings Flip’s total capital raised to $65 million.
Sequoia Capital India, Insight Partners and Insignia Ventures Partners co-led the Series B round. Flip is Insight Partners’ first investment in Indonesia.
The startup plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate its business expansion further, strengthen its operations in Indonesia, advance technology and expand its engineering and product teams.
“This new funding is a testament to our team’s commitment and persistence. It gives us the resources we need to fuel and accelerate our mission to build innovative solutions that simplify money movement in Indonesia,” said Rafi Putra Arriyan, co-founder and CEO of Flip.
Arriyan, Luqman Sungkar and Ginanjar Ibnu Solikhin co-founded the company in 2015 while studying at University of Indonesia. They built the Flip platform to find an answer to the problem Arriyan himself experienced as a college student — having to wait for a long time to transfer funds and pay a transfer fee each time to different banks.
In Indonesia, transferring money can be tedious for bank account holders — from funds getting stuck while transferring to lengthy clerical processes and poor product experiences with outdated interfaces and complicated flow. Flip hopes to change that by helping individuals and businesses to eliminate complexity and execute their money transfer at a low cost.
Flip, which intends to be the most customer-centric financial technology company in the world, enables users to do fair financial transactions from anywhere to anyone. The startup obtained a license from Bank Indonesia (BI) in 2016 to provide financial services, including interbank transfers to more than 100 domestic banks, international remittances, e-wallet top-ups, salary transfers and business solution products.
The company said the annual volume of money transfer in Indonesia was recorded at a nominal value of more than $2.2 trillion in 2020, citing Bank Indonesia’s data.
“Interbank transfer is the most dominant payment method in Indonesia’s fast-growing digital economy. Flip has a massive user base and is growing rapidly with outstanding retention metrics, all of which point to the delightful and seamless product that the company has built… Sequoia Capital India believes that Flip is the most exciting consumer fintech company in Indonesia. The firm is thrilled to be leading the third consecutive round, testament of its high conviction in the company,” said Aakash Kapoor, vice president of Sequoia India.
Flip serves more than seven million users for various kinds of financial transactions from and to different regions in Indonesia and overseas money transfers. More than 340 Indonesian companies and SMEs in travel, hospitality, e-commerce, transportation, education, outsourcing, crowdfunding and business management sectors use Flip’s employee payroll, customer refunds, invoice/ supplier payments and international transfers.
Its users have increased 10x compared to before the pandemic, following the increase of technology adoption and mobility restrictions in Indonesia, Arriyan said. During the pandemic, the protocol around mobility restriction in Indonesia resulted in most bank offices closing, requiring people to use technology-based solutions for their financial transactions, he continued. The shift in consumer behavior from visiting bank branches to using digital products increased users, Arriyan added.
“Flip is disrupting the existing interbank transfer market and has established itself as a clear leader in the category, with its superior product that allows for seamless payment movement between bank partners,” said Deven Parekh, managing director at Insight Partners.
“As the first institutional investor in Flip, we have witnessed the incredible growth of the product and the execution of the team over the past two years. Flip is now the dominant player in its space, with millions of Indonesians trusting the platform for their day-to-day financial needs,” said Samir Chaibi, principal at Insignia Ventures Partners.
Flip has added over 250 team members to build its financial services for millions of Indonesian people. The company has increased its team size by 140% over the past months.