We have always been aware that simplifying payments is a universal problem. Startups and enterprises across the developing world face similar issues: making payments easier and more effective. At Razorpay, we believe that with our experience of operating in a market as diverse as India, we’re ready to solve these problems globally.
Today, with the trust of our partners and the backing of our strong investors, we’ve taken a big step forward. We’ve embarked on an exciting new journey, to reimagine and transform the payments ecosystem in Southeast Asia.
We are delighted to announce our international expansion with the acquisition of a majority stake in Curlec, a leading Malaysian fintech firm. Curlec is a Kuala Lumpur-based company, building solutions for recurring payments for businesses of all sizes. This is our first international acquisition and our fourth overall.
We see great potential in the Southeast Asian market. While e-commerce is already booming in Malaysia with an estimated market size of $21 billion in 2021, an industry report says it is estimated to grow further to over $35 billion by 2025. Malaysian shoppers are also more open to cross-border purchases, which account for 40% of all transactions.
With the entry of new e-commerce consumers, we believe that a broader range of payment services will be required to cater to their needs. We are confident that our partnership with Curlec will open up newer channels for global business expansion for online businesses in India and Malaysia.
Curlec works with hundreds of businesses across Malaysia, including the likes of insurance giant AXA, fintech lending firm Funding Societies, and Axiata Digital. The company builds new-age technology solutions on top of existing payments infrastructure, to make it easier for businesses to collect recurring payments.
It is incredible to witness the scale of impact that Zac Liew and Steve Kucia – Curlec’s passionate founders – and their team have created in such a short span of time. They have extensive knowledge of the Malaysian payments ecosystem and their values mirror ours in every sense. They have the same product and share the same tech-first philosophy of building products and delighting customers like ours. We look forward to learning the nuances of the Malaysian market, understanding the business and customer needs, and slowly adapting and building products tailored to the Southeast Asian geography. We can’t wait to work with Curlec’s incredible talent and strength.
Zac shares our excitement. “We’ve long admired from afar what Harshil, Shashank and the Razorpay team have built in India,” Curlec’s Co-Founder and CEO says. “We are fully aligned with a common vision of building payment and banking solutions from top to bottom, for any business. We look forward to the next phase of our journey and scaling together across Malaysia and Southeast Asia.”
Our mission was to become the one single destination for businesses’ payment and banking needs in India; we will now begin that same pursuit of success in Malaysia. Today was a first step in that direction.
