Viva Republica, the South Korea-based owner of payment app Toss, has received $80m in funding from investors including telecommunications company Novel, payment technology provider PayPal and mobile chipmaker Qualcomm, TechCrunch has reported.
The round, which valued the company at $1.2bn, was co-led by Kleiner Perkins and Ribbit Capital, and also featured Altos Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), Goodwater Capital and KTB Network, while Qualcomm invested through its Qualcomm Ventures unit.
Toss was originally created as a peer-to-peer money transfer app but has diversified to offer a range of financial services including bank account management, investment options, insurance, and consumer credit and credit scoring.
The app has been downloaded more than 21 million times and the funding was raised as Viva Republica looks to expand into securities brokerage services, according to Bloomberg. It increased the company’s overall funding to $197m since being founded in 2015.
Qualcomm Ventures first invested in Viva Republica as part of a $23.7m series B round in 2016 that included KTB Network, Altos Ventures and Goodwater Capital. The latter two returned for a $48m series C in March 2017 also backed by PayPal, BVP and Partech Ventures.
The series C round, which valued the company at more than $250m post-money, was followed by $40m in funding in June this year from Sequoia Capital China and GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.
Photo courtesy of Viva Republica.
