We are pleased to have advised NZ payments company, LatiPay, on its series A investment led by Jubilee Capital Management, with participation from others.

LatiPay enables Chinese consumers to pay for goods and services using Chinese Yuan. Its customers have typically been exporters, and in tourism or education, but an increasing number of merchants are signing up to the platform. The benefit for merchants using Latipay’s platform is that they receive payment direct to their account in local currency and at no extra cost. In addition, aside from their bank, Chinese based payers can use any of the leading e-wallets including Baidu, AliPay, WeChat pay or JDPAY. With the funds, LatiPay are looking to expand beyond NZ and Australia into Singapore and the US.

Jubilee Capital is a Singapore-based VC fund which is relatively new on the scene. Last November, the fund announced the launch of their US$30 million tech fund and plan to grow this to US$100 million over time. As well as Singapore and Beijing, the fund has a presence in Auckland and therefore it’s great to see that one of their first investments is in a NZ based company.

In recent months, we’ve seen an increasing number of NZ tech companies raising money from the vast pool of Singapore VC funds and investors. With government support, Singapore is also emerging as a global fintech hub alongside London and NY. We are fortunate enough to have advised some exciting fintech companies in Southeast Asia, such as Coins.ph and Compare88, on large funding rounds. It is therefore great to see a NZ company getting similar headlines. With our branch office opening in Singapore very shortly, we look forward to helping more Kiwi tech businesses explore the fast growing ASEAN market.

Finally, as legal partners to the Kiwibank Fintech Accelerator which kicks off shortly, we hope that the rapid growth of LatiPay serves as inspiration for the awesome teams lined up on the programme.