Mynt, the Philippine payments app backed by Jack Ma’s Ant Financial, has raised $175 million in fresh capital from US investment firm Bow Wave Capital Management and existing shareholders.
The fresh funding gives Mynt, the fintech arm of Globe Telecom and operator of mobile wallet GCash, a post-money valuation of close to $1 billion, Globe said in a statement Friday.
The investment was made in multiple tranches. Bow Wave Capital made the investment through ASP Philippines, a limited partnership fund that it manages.
Founded in 2004, Mynt is 45% owned by Ant Financial and Globe Telecom each while Philippine conglomerate Ayala Corporation holds the remaining 10%.
The Mynt transaction marks Bow Wave’s first investment in the Philippines. Bow Wave will acquire a minority equity interest in Mynt following the deal. Details regarding how the investment would impact the current shareholder structure remain undisclosed.
New York-based Bow Wave is a close-ended private equity fund with a mandate to invest in global online and mobile payment ecosystem companies.
The latest capital injection in Mynt comes at a time when the virus crisis has accelerated the use of digital payments in the country.
GCash recorded a gross transaction value of over 1 trillion pesos ($20 billion) last year, spurred by services like online payments, bank cash-in, and money remittance. It has over 33 million digital wallet users. The mobile wallet allows users to transact physically and online, purchase airtime load, open deposit accounts, save and invest in money market funds, and acquire insurance products.
In April 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Voyager Innovations, operator of payments and remittance platform Paymaya, announced raising $120 million from existing backers PLDT, private equity firm KKR, China’s Tencent, International Finance Corp, and the IFC Emerging Asia Fund.
Gojek, Indonesia’s ride-hailing unicorn, also manifested its interest in the local remittance and payments market when it acquired local fintech firm Coins.ph for a reported $72 million in 2019.
