Timo secured US $20 M to provide digital banking services to the unbanked Vietnamese population

Timo, a Vietnamese digital banking platform, has secured $20 million in a fresh funding round headed by Square Peg, a worldwide investment group.

In addition to previous investors Phoenix Holdings and unknown angels, Jungle Ventures, Granite Oak, and FinAccel also co-invested, according to a news release from the neobank.

Timo plans to use Square Peg’s fintech experience to help the company develop, with the goal of “setting the bar” for contemporary banking in the country.

Timo is a 24-hour online bank that was founded in 2015 with the goal of increasing financial inclusion and accessibility for the vast majority of the unbanked Vietnamese population. Its online platform not only helps users save time during onboarding processes but also gives them access to additional financial services.

Timo does not have actual bank branches; instead, it provides customers with coffee and seating facilities where they can make deposits and manage their accounts.

Timo is one of the few banks in Vietnam that offers eKYC services, according to a release.

In order to expand the business, Timo forged a strategic relationship with Viet Capital Bank in 2019.

The firm has recently made progress with its social banking idea. Timo’s features, such as TimoPay by Link and Smart History, allow recipients to respond to transactions in the same way that they would on a social networking site, while also including other financial needs such as insurance and investment.

Timo claims to have completed over two million transactions per month in 2021, totalling US $2.5 billion in gross transaction value.

In comparison to APAC’s growing nations and several APAC established markets, Vietnam saw an arguably greater rise in active digital bank users, according to McKinsey research.

Furthermore, between 2017 and 2021, 88 percent of APAC clients in developing countries used digital banks, with Vietnamese users expanding by 41% to 82 percent in 2021 alone.

Square Peg has invested in a variety of fintech companies, including Southeast Asian buy-now-pay-later business Kredivo, robo-advisor startup StashAway, and Indonesia-based wealth tech firm Pluang, with over $1 billion in assets under management.