Tazapay, a digital escrow service for cross-border trade, has announced it is fully operational across India, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Tazapay provides digital business verification and escrow services to small-medium enterprises (SME) who wish to boost business by increasing their number of trading partners and streamlining transactions.
Cross-border business-to-business (B2B) commerce for SMEs is an addressable market of approximately $8 trillion globally, yet easily facilitating international trade remains a challenge. It’s largely based on trust, and it can be hard to feel confident about a trade partner, particularly if partners are unable to meet in-person. This leads to a significant number of deals falling through, slowing the growth of the businesses themselves as well as local and regional economies. Tazapay provides SMEs with fast, simple background checks on potential business partners and a digital escrow to give both buyers and sellers peace of mind. Tazapay holds funds securely until both parties have confirmed fulfilled their obligations of the trade.
“More efficient trade can no doubt have a significant positive impact on local, regional and global economies, and Tazapay is dedicated to helping trade partners build trust to boost business opportunities,” said Rahul Shinghal, CEO of Tazapay. “We help SMEs grow by offering a fully digital platform that is easy to access and integrate into their workflows. The markets in which we initially operate are significant trading corridors within APAC, and with the support of our growing team and investment partners we look forward to expanding our global footprint and offering more services in the future.”
Tazapay also announced additional investment of $1.75 million from existing investors Sequoia Capital India’s Surge and Saison Capital, and new partners RTP Global and January Capital, on top of its original round of funding of $3.2 million announced in early 2021. The new funding is earmarked for ramping up customer acquisition resources and scaling the technology and growth teams. Tazapay has recently welcomed its new head of product from global financial technology infrastructure platform Nium, and its head of growth from leading global payments platform Stripe.
“The Tazapay team has a great deal of collective experience in finance and payments, and we’ve been consistently impressed by their ambition to solve this urgent issue for SMEs,” said Benjamin Dunphy, Partner at January Capital. “As the world recalibrates after the global pandemic, Tazapay’s solution will become increasingly critical as businesses continue to shift rapidly to digital-first operations and look to drive growth by uncovering new business opportunities.”
“Inefficient cross-border trade is time-consuming and stressful. Deals often fall through because parties lack confidence in each other, causing business disruption, cash flow issues and limiting trading opportunities. COVID made this situation worse,” said Nazri Abdullah, CEO of Malaysia-based commodity trading company Ra2 Sdn Bhd and Tazapay customer. “Tazapay’s digital escrow service comes at a critical time. It puts both parties on equal footing and creates trust in the trade from the beginning. Tazapay also saves us a great deal of time in terms of background research about potential partners, speeding up deals so we can do more of them which ultimately helps us grow.”
Tazapay also confirms its partnership with Rapyd, a global Fintech-as-a-Service provider. Rapyd will be Tazapay’s exclusive payments facilitator, ensuring that sellers receive their full fees upon completion of a transaction.
