Indonesian fintech start-up Transfez announced on Tuesday that it had secured an undisclosed amount in a seed round co-led by East Ventures and Singapore's Beenext.

Transfez said in a statement that the company planned to use the fresh funds to expand its cross-border payment services to the business-to-business (B2B) segment. The start-up’s services, covering 26 currencies and more than 50 countries, are currently limited to the business-to-consumer (B2C) segment.

“Transfez seeks to further build unique solutions and products tailored to Asian markets, specifically for Indonesia’s US$370 billion cross-border payments sector,” Bondan Herumurti, Transfez cofounder and chief technology officer, said in the statement.

Seed funding is typically the first money a start-up raises to grow its business, and is usually less than $10 million.

“We believe this fund will help the Transfez team in scaling technology, operations and other business needs,” said Beenext managing partner Hero Choudhary.

Aside from Transfez, the early stage venture capital firm has also invested in peer-to-peer lender Amartha, furniture and home decoration marketplace Dekoruma and education technology platform Zenius, all Indonesian start-ups.

Read also: Singapore’s Beenext to focus new $160m in funding on SE Asia, India, Japan

Separately, East Ventures partner Melisa Irene said that cross-border financial services enabled overseas workers to make secure remittances to their families back home and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to purchase their inventory from global suppliers.

According to the Indonesian Migrant Workers Protection Agency (BP2MI), 113,173 Indonesian migrant workers (PMI) were working abroad last year. While the figure was a significant decrease from 276,553 workers in 2019 due to COVID-19, the rise of remote working could boost the number of Indonesians employed at foreign companies.

Read also: 'Don't scapegoat migrant workers for COVID-19 surge': Activists

Transfez said its international money transfer service used a fully digital process with real-time settlement and was up to 10 times cheaper than bank transfers.

Since its establishment in 2020, the fintech start-up is on track to reaching Rp 1.5 trillion ($105 million) in total transaction value this year. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Transfez said it had experienced thirtyfold growth in individual transactions it processed over the past year.

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