AAA VNLife banks $250m in series B round

VNLife banks $250m in series B round

VNLife, a Vietnam-based digital payments platform provider, has collected $250m in a series B round featuring internet and telecommunications group SoftBank’s Vision Fund 1 and digital payment services provider PayPal.

Growth equity firms General Atlantic and Dragoneer Investment Group co-led the round, which also featured Singaporean state-owned venture capital fund EDBI and sovereign wealth fund GIC.

PayPal contributed to the capital injection through its corporate venturing arm PayPal Ventures.

VNLife provides an e-commerce payments platform for Vietnamese consumers and merchants across sectors including telecommunications, retail, hospitality and travel. Its subsidiary VNPay offers a payment solution which includes a mobile banking app and a digital wallet to 40 banks across the country.

The company also operates VNPay-QR, a QR code-based cashless payment network, which it said counts 22 million users and over 150,000 merchants.

VNLife plans to use the capital raised to further boost the growth of its digital ecosystem and accelerate the development of new technologies for its platforms.

GIC became VNLife’s first external shareholder in 2019, the company confirmed in its series B announcement.

SoftBank’s Vision Fund 1 also contributed as a returning investor, having earlier entered negotiations with VNLife in July 2019, to invest up to $200m as part of a $300m round. It is unclear how much the corporate ended up investing.