Southeast Asian fintech company Akulaku has raised $100 million in debt financing from London-based HSBC, Reuters reported on Friday. The Alibaba-backed firm will use the funds to settle some of its outstanding debts, said CEO William Li to Reuters.
This latest debt funding follows the $200 million that Akulaku raised from the banking unit of Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) in December 2022. In February that year, the firm had raised $100 million from Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank (SCB).
Established in 2016, Akulaku is a multi-finance company offering services like Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL), consumer credit, and digital banking. In Indonesia, it partners with a number of lenders such as Bank Jago, Bank Neo Commerce, Bank OCBC Indonesia, and Bank Permata for BNPL services. Akulaku’s services can also be found on Bukalapak, TikTok, and Ruangguru, among others.
Akulaku Indonesia had told DealStreetAsia that the company planned to double down on its BNPL product this year. The company has established a growth target of 20% this year for pay-later financing, from 9 trillion rupiah ($527 million) last year, according to Efrinal Sinaga, President Director of Akulaku Finance Indonesia.
BNPL has been growing in Indonesia since 2014. The number of BNPL contracts surged almost 20x to 80 million in 2023 from 4.63 million in 2019, according to data from Indonesia’s Financial services Authority (OJK). However, the cumulative assets of BNPL only contributed 2% of multifinance’s total assets at 552 trillion rupiah at the end of last year.
The company has operations in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand besides home country Indonesia.
In October last year, OJK imposed restrictions on Akulaku’s operations due to alleged violations concerning supervisory obligations associated with its BNPL services. These violations reportedly include breaches of regulations on risk management and corporate governance standards.
However, the restrictions were lifted earlier this month.
Akulaku was an early entrant in Indonesia’s neo-banking sector with Bank Neo Commerce, which boasts over 25 million users. Its customer base spans individuals, MSMEs, and corporations. Bank Neo Commerce is one of the key players in the digital banking arena, alongside Bank Jago and SeaBank Indonesia.
