The first close is led by high profile new investors MDI ventures, the venture capital arm of Telkom, and Thailand's Kasikornbank via its Beacon Venture Capital fund.

The Series C round of $45 million, which takes the remittance fintech’s overall funding to over $63 million, is expected to close by January 2019, in advance of its expected IPO in 2021.

The firm says the new capital will help it to enter new markets in Japan and Indonesia, where it’s expected to receive licences by the end of this year, and to launch a new consumer and enterprise product in 2019.

The company currently holds money transfer licenses in Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, United States, Canada, Malaysia, India and Europe.

Thanapong Na Ranong, MD of Beacon VC, says: "We have been following InstaReM for some time, and are impressed with the way the company has been expanding globally, and scaling up its operations. As Kasikornbank becomes the digital bank of choice for customers, we have a strong commitment to working closely with category leaders in each sector and constantly improving our customer experience."

A member of Ripple's global network of banks and other financial institutions, the firm also serves larger institutional and corporate clients with its MassPay product - an international business payments platform with bulk and customisd payments facility, multi-currency payments and accounts. The company says that in the last quarter, it has signed up over 20 large financial services clients with expected monthly volume of US$ 200-250 million. The majority of these clients expect go live in Q1 2019.