Fintech firm NextPay seeks to raise $100 mln

E-payment company NextPay Holdings plans to raise up to $100 million in the first quarter next year via a private placement. Its CEO, Nguyen Huu Tuat, said that the company is looking for strategic foreign investors and would offer them a 20 percent stake, revealing that it is in talks with several investors from the U.S., Japan, South Korea, and China.

Last year it had wanted to raise around $30 million from investors, but Tuat said the company has jettisoned the plan and instead now seeks to make a $100 million IPO in 2022 on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange.

The company provides mobile points of sale devices and an app for cashless payment. It has 70,000 merchants in Vietnam and aims to increase the number to 300,000 by 2023.

NextPay allows a customer to pay by a variety of methods such as card, contactless, and QR code by providing a merchant with a pocket-size mobile point of sale device which connects with a smartphone.

Vietnam is seeing increasing competition in the fintech market as the government seeks to promote cashless payment.MoMo, the most popular e-wallet in the country, last year reportedly raised $100 million from U.S. private equity firm Warburg Pincus following previous investments of $25 million by Standard Chartered and $3 million by Goldman Sachs.

Vietnam’s fintech market was valued at $4.4 billion in 2017 and is estimated to reach $7.8 billion in 2020, according to market research firm Solidiance.