Bengaluru: Cashfree Payments is looking to expand its cross-border payments offering aggressively, thanks to a fresh injection of $53 million in its latest funding round.
Krafton, the South Korean media giant, led the round alongside existing investor Apis Growth Fund II. That brings the payments firm’s valuation to $700 million, according to a person familiar with the development.
After the fundraise, co-founder and chief executive officer Akash Sinha told Mint the company would focus on three main pillars—customer experience, merchant experience, and payments infrastructure. International expansion and cross-border payments are part of the fourth pillar in 2025. “The product is already live in the market with a few beta customers. But this year, we anticipate to reach a larger size,” Sinha said.
The company plans to expand aggressively in and around the Middle East via UAE-based payments firm Telr, which it acquired three years ago, Sinha told Mint. “Luckily, India has been leading in the fintech market. It’s easy for us to borrow a lot of learnings from this market and take it to a developing market which is seeing a similar kind of scaling in payments.”
Countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait are building domestic payment systems similar to India’s UPI and RuPay networks.
Cashfree’s revenue in international markets currently stands at 10-15%. Sinha doesn’t expect the bulk of the company’s revenue generation to shift from India but says that international markets will act as a “good booster”.
The South Korean media conglomerate usually invests in consumer internet, media and content platforms, and its decision to back Cashfree breaks from that strategy.
“We decided to make this investment from a future-looking perspective,” said Nihansh Bhat, Krafton’s corporate developments and investment lead for India, Middle East and North Africa. The firm would continue to look at sectors it is not currently invested in, he said.
Cashfree’s key goal continues to be growing its business by at least four to five times. “We have a lot of headroom in the industry. A lot of payment-first segments like business-to-consumer, ecommerce, travel and hyper local delivery are moving,” Sinha said. Currently, the company has no plans for an initial public offering.