Standard Chartered has set up a global e-commerce joint venture with Australia's Assembly Payments.
The new company will be headquartered in Singapore and will offer a digital payment platform to manage transactions across multiple payment types and countries, including online, mobile and point-of-sale, digital wallets, debit and credit cards and real-time payments.
Alex Manson, head of SC Ventures, the innovation, fintech investment and ventures arm of Standard Chartered, says: “As the world moves towards platform-based e-commerce, the need for the next generation of tools to empower merchants and enable financial inclusion continues to grow. We identified payments as an area where we wanted to make a strategic investment.”
Assembly Payments is one of Australia’s fastest-growing fintech businesses. Since founding in Melbourne, Australia in 2013 Assembly has grown to employ over 130 staff and raised over A$70 million in equity financing.
Simon Lee, Co-CEO Assembly Payments, says: “We have created a significant business in Australia and now, together with Standard Chartered, we are well placed to crack the international payments market and exponentially grow the business. We are also proud that this is one of the first major global fintech deals between a global bank and a major Australian fintech company.”