MANILA, Philippines — BayaniPay, a financial service for global professionals, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding from East West Bank, Wavemaker Partners and Talino Venture Labs.
Earlier this year, BayaniPay contracted with East West Bank, the largest independent bank headquartered in Southern California, to offer Filipino American customers banking services, including a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insured checking account.
East West Bank joins BDO Unibank, the Philippines’ largest bank; Asian Journal, one of the leaders in the Asian American media industry; and Seafood City, the largest Filipino-owned supermarket chain in the US, in BayaniPay’s roster of industry-leading collaborators.
This collaboration positions BayaniPay as the first cross-border, digital financial service for the Filipino American community, which is 4.2 million strong and accounts for $146 billion or 14.4% of the Asian American market in the United States: a segment that has been previously underserved by traditional banks and other financial institutions.
BayaniPay offers easy, convenient and low cost cross-border financial services from the United States to the Philippines.
Its customers enjoy a host of benefits from its feature-rich platform, including access to a digital checking account, a debit card that maximizes spending power, and zero fee remittance and market-leading forex rates for Filipino Americans who are sending money home.
Furthermore, BayaniPay will deliver more financial solutions to Filipinos in the US soon.
BayaniPay is collaborating with BDO Unibank to enable its users in the US to directly pay services in the Philippines through paycode technologies.
Local businesses and services can simply provide Filipino American customers paycodes that they can use for easy and convenient cross-border payment of bills, tuition and school fees, medical expenses and even real estate.
Since announcing its expansion, BayaniPay has gained over 7,000 users and its work in disrupting the global banking landscape has caught the attention of many digital publications, including Forbes and American Banker.
"We are excited about how quickly BayaniPay has grown since we first launched," said BayaniPay CEO Winston Damarillo. "Our ongoing efforts are driven by the desire to eliminate the financial hardships of new immigrants and minority communities."
The fresh capital from East West Bank and Wavemaker Partners will allow BayaniPay to expand the technology team as the company scales its product lineup and expands into more geographies.