Funding Societies enters strategic partnership with SGeBIZ to bring embedded finance solutions for SMEs in Singapore

SINGAPORE, April 24, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Funding Societies, the largest unified SME (small and medium enterprises) digital finance platform in Southeast Asia, announced a strategic partnership with Singapore E-Business (SGeBIZ) – a digital procurement, payment and sourcing platform provider – to bring B2B (business-to-business) embedded finance (EmFi) solutions to businesses in Singapore, that will channel Funding Societies' digital financing capabilities via the "Buy Now, Pay Later" (BNPL) feature offered within the latter's procurement solution, EzyProcure.

The partnership will allow the over two thousand businesses, who are using the EzyProcure platform – comprising mainly SMEs from food and beverage businesses and their suppliers using the platform – to be able to receive a customised financing solution, supported and underwritten by Funding Societies, to help these businesses manage their cash flow.

Singapore Country Head of Funding Societies, Simon Xie, said, "We're honoured to partner with SGeBIZ in taking a more holistic approach in serving SMEs to aid their cash flow management needs. One such way is recognising how we are embedding our digital financing capabilities and best practices in serving Singaporean SMEs over the past nine years to support the BNPL offering via EzyProcure. This will synergise both companies' value propositions to reach more underserved SMEs in Singapore."

The Asia Pacific region shows the most promise of EmFi solutions flourishing, forecasting US$306 billion market revenue potential – more than half that of the global market potential of US$606 billion^[1]. Furthermore, The global B2B e-commerce market is already six times larger than that of B2C (business-to-consumer) – with Asia Pacific projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22% until 2030^[2]. Innovative payment options such as BNPL become a key differentiating factor for an B2B buyer-merchant ecosystem, especially when 95% of B2B online buyers prefer paying on credit terms just as they would offline, but are unable to do so with only less than 10% of merchants offering such an option.

Group CEO of SGeBIZ, Edmund Louis Nathan said, "The partnership with Funding Societies is something I have envisioned since the inception of SGeBIZ, to be able to value-add and help our SMEs by providing much-needed liquidity to grow their businesses. It is also extremely timely, with the uncertainty in the economic conditions, rising costs associated with food costs, labour, rental and even utilities. The BNPL offering will serve as a perfect complement to our existing EzyProcure platform which has added efficiency gains to new and existing Buyers and Suppliers in our ecosystem.

Launched in 2016, EzyProcure is a cloud-based platform that automates the business-to-business ordering, invoice reconciliation and payment processes for food and beverage businesses with their suppliers. In doing so, businesses replace many tedious manual processes and with access to liquidity,  SMEs can allocate more time for growth.

Since its inception in 2015, Funding Societies has disbursed over SGD5 billion (approx. SGD3.67 billion)^[3] in business financing through five million transactions, positively impacting over 100,000 SMEs across its five markets in Southeast Asia, namely Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

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About Funding Societies

Funding Societies is the largest unified SME digital finance platform in Southeast Asia. It is licensed in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, registered in Malaysia, and operates in Vietnam. The FinTech company provides US$1 billion annually of business financing to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In recent years, it has made strategic milestones including its acquisition of regional digital payments platform CardUp and co-investment into Bank Index in Indonesia.

Funding Societies is backed by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, CGC Digital (the digital arm of the Credit Guarantee Corporation Malaysia Berhad), SBVA (previously SoftBank Ventures Asia), Peak XV Partners (previously Sequoia Capital India), Alpha JWC Ventures, SMBC Bank, BRI Ventures, VNG Corporation, Rapyd Ventures, Endeavor, EBDI, SGInnovate, Qualgro, and Golden Gate Ventures among others.

It has received accolades through the years including: Brands for Good (2019, 2023), Global SME Excellence Award, Global SME Finance Awards by IFC (2021-2023) Global Startup Awards (2020), MAS FinTech Award (2016, 2021), Singapore's Fastest-Growing Companies 2024 (a list of 100 companies compiled by The Straits Times and Statista).

For more information, please visit: www.fundingsocieties.com

About SGeBiz

Singapore E-Business Pte Ltd (SGeBIZ) is a Fintech Enabler for SMEs in South East Asia and a leading procure-to-pay platform in Singapore. As a trusted financial control center, SGeBIZ provides digital solutions from procurement, invoicing, payment and collection to over 3,000 businesses in Singapore and Malaysia. Powered by deep-rooted partnerships with financial institutions, schemes and a bedrock of customers, a proprietary technology provides businesses, both locally and globally, with more efficient operations via real-time data and analytics.

SGeBIZ is a recognized brand in its space and one of its solutions are supported under government grants. With  over a decade of business relationships, the company firmly believes in leveraging its technology and solutions to support the SME segment in the markets that it operates in.