April 26, 2024

• 

Viva Republica, Korea’s leading fintech startup and operator of mobile financial service Toss, on Aug. 28 announced that it has raised $173 million in the latest funding round.

The latest fundraising, which puts the company’s valuation at $2.6 billion, came as the company pushes to expand to all aspects of financial services including securities brokerage and insurance. It plans to introduce a mobile securities service by the end of this year and an internet bank unit by next year in its efforts to become a full-service fintech super app. It has already launched Toss Insurance and Toss Payments after acquiring the payments business unit of LGU+. 

Toss Co-founder and CEO Lee Seung-gun (Viva Republica)

The company said it aims to consolidate various financial products and by leveraging user engagement data, offer the most customized recommendation of products from financial institutions, such as banks, securities and insurance companies. Accordingly, it plans to add 500 more talents to the current 600 employees by the end of the year.

“We are building a financial super app fundamentally innovating across every facet of consumer finance. We believe that this fundraising has brought us a step closer to reaching our goal and we will continue to dedicate our efforts until we revolutionize all financial activities within everyday lives through Toss,” co-founder and CEO of Viva Republica Lee Seung-gun said.

Including this fundraising, the company has so far raised a total of $530 million via eight rounds. The returning investors that participated in the fundraising include Aspex Management, Sequoia Capital China, Kleiner Perkins Digital Growth Fund, Altos Ventures, Goodwater Capital, and Greyhound Capital.

Launched in 2015, Toss boasts over 17 million users adding 1 million new users every quarter. It has posted a compounded annual growth rate of 225 percent since 2016 as revenue surpassed $100 million in 2019 while recording its first profitable quarter in the second quarter of this year.

Toss, which started out in February 2015 as a simplified money transfer service has been downloaded 49 million times, and has over 17 million registered users and has processed a total of $10 billion of transactions since its launch as of August 2020.

By Park Ga-young (gypark@heraldcorp.com)