Zipmex, a Singapore-based digital asset exchange, has raised $41 million in a Series B round from a group of corporate investors and venture capitalists.
Krungsri Finnovate, the corporate venture capital arm of Bank of Ayudhya, Plan B Media and Master Ad (MACO), as well as new and current VCs like MindWorks Capital and Jump Capital, took part.
With this, Zipmex has now raised a total of US$52 million in financing.
This is Bank of Ayudhya’s (part of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group) first investment in a Southeast Asian digital asset platform.
The fresh funds will be used to expand Zipmex’s product offerings and its technical team in order to launch new digital asset solutions in lending, payments, and securities.
The digital assets exchange will also launch a new marketing campaign via Plan B Media’s and MACO’s out-of-home media networks. This seeks to increase the number of people who can use the potential of digital payments.
The business also aims to develop Zipmex Card, a Visa-backed payment card, and ZLaunch, a platform that provides users early access to new investment tokens, according to a news release.
Zipmex, which was founded in 2018 by Marcus Lim and Akalarp Yimwilai, provides instructional elements for novice investors and serves high-net-worth people through two earning accounts (one flexible and one fixed-term), all of which are backed by the ZMT token.
Businesses can use the company’s digital asset payment solutions, and it claims to have facilitated numerous regional firsts in luxury automobiles, art, and real estate transactions.
Zipmex has announced a collaboration with Major Cineplex Group, Thailand’s largest movie theater operator, and digital payment company RapidZ to allow select moviegoers to purchase tickets using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Zipmex CEO Marcus Lim said: “A marriage of digital assets and traditional banking can provide new innovative use cases for money, which we have demonstrated through ZipWorld. Further, the use cases of Zlaunch and ZipNFT are just the starting point of where we can evolve to be banking forward, lifestyle-focused.”
To date, Zipmex claims to have acquired one million customers and processed over $4 billion in gross transaction volume.
In addition to Thailand, the global exchange will be approved in Indonesia and Australia, where it will be regulated. In Singapore, Zipmex is in the advanced stages of seeking for a Major Payment Institution licence with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for digital payment token services through its subsidiary.
