The Philippines ‘ first Neobank Tonik successfully raised USD 17 million in the pre-series B funding that brings its total funding to USD 44 million. This funding is led by Singaporean VC firm iGlobe Partners. The round of investors includes Sequoia India, Altara Ventures, Insignia Venture Partners and newly joined investors are Baring Vostok Capital Partners, Citius VC firm, and some Philippine family offices.

Neobank Tonik headquarters located in Singapore with 40% of the local subsidiary owned by Philippine investors. Since launching in March 2021, it has received positive feedback with services like deposit, payment, and card products to users in the Philippines. There are 30,000 consumers on their fintech platform with a positive balance sheet of over USD 20 million a month. The company functions with a rural banking license in waits for regulatory approval from Phillippine central bank to approve the digital banking license.

Greg Krasnov, Tonik CEO and founder mentioned that the new funding is to help the bank to accelerate its growth with product development in mind. As they are the first-in-the-market digital financial services, they are expanding significantly for the next 12 months. The plan is to provide offers on payments and rolling out consumer loans. Their current financial services are offering an interest rate of up to 6 percent per annum.

Soo Boon Koh, founder and Managing Partner of iGlobe Partners stated that it is an impressive result for Tonik to launch recently and the consumers are ready to adopt. This shows that the company resonates well with the local needs of underserved market. According to the 2019 Financial Inclusion Survey, there are still 72 million adults remain unbanked with 71% of the country’s population. This includes the young people with a median age of 24 who are capable of using smartphones for services. Hence, there is a huge underserved market in the current banking system.