Coowry raises €1m funding from Swanlaab Venture Factory and French V.C Breega Capital

Coowry the Spanish micro-payments platform that enables mobile users to user their phone credit (both for prepaid and contract plans) as exchangeable digital currency, has just closed a EUR 1m funding round to ensure their global expansion in the digital transactions market.

«The Spanish micro-payments platform opens a door to the digital economy to millions of people lacking access to bank accounts and credit cards.»

The deal has been leaded by V.C Swanlaab Venture Factory, a Spanish-Israeli fund manager with offices in Madrid and Tel aviv, and co-founded by J21 Ventures among other LPs.  The investment has been executed through the fund Swanlaab Giza Innvierte I, seventh fund of Giza’s group at a global level, the second to operate outside Israel and the first to invest exclusively in Spanish technology companies. The other main investor in the round has been French V.C player Breega Capital, with proved experience in the digital and telecom world. The legal advisor to the operation has been Spanish law firm Fourlaw.

«The financial boost will enable the start-up to expand throughout Latin America and Spain (as its first European market). The company is already present in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.»

Coowry was founded by Spanish entrepreneurs David Moreno and Carlos Heredia, who´s platform proves as a far superior alternative to the existing complex and expensive micro-payment solutions, giving access to millions of users to the digital economy which are presently outliers to the banking system (without credit cards or bank accounts).

Presently, billions of Dollars are exchanged annually in small scale transactions as a consequence of: small amount sales (i.e books, music, mobile apps and services, games, etc.), social network affiliations, digital marketing actions, and even small informal transactions between friends.

The Mobile phone turns into a new currency

Coowry makes micro-payments simple, with no fees and in real time, by enabling mobile telecom operators to act out the role of agents (instead of banks) in micro-payment transactions.

Anyone can send or request payments, even if it´s for cents, just as he would send any message by just inserting the recipients phone number; a simple and comfortable system which doesn´t demand for anyone to disclose additional personal information (credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc..). The transactions can be emitted directly through the web page, email, any of the solution network solutions designed by the company or from a native application.

Presently the company is mainly present in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, where it relies on the support of Asian telecom Axiata (with more than 290 million clients in Southeast Asia) and agreements with local telecom operators. As we speak the company is immersed in the expansion of the group towards the Latin American market and Spain (as its first European market). Since its launch at the end of 2016, Coowry has followed through more than 170,000 transaction through 40,000 mobile lines and thirty e.-businesses which already accept Coowry as a valid method of payment.

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