The further capital builds upon an earlier seed round of 3,9 M USD, which Tapp Commerce has used to build its’ foundational commerce platform and the Tapp Market mobile application. Tapp Market has already witnessed exponential growth in Indonesia within the first 3 quarters of operations alone and has been recently launched in the Philippines. With the inclusion of this current funding round, this brings Tapp Commerce total funds raised and secured to date to a total of 12,9 M USD.

Tapp Market, provides a possibility for people without bank accounts to buy goods and services online via extensive mobile point of sales agents (micro entrepreneurs) network in emerging markets. Whether there is a need for prepaid electricity in Indonesia or need to pay tuition fees in Philippines, Tapp Market makes lives of ordinary people easier and more enjoyable. It also brings the earning opportunity to those who want to start their own business via serving others online. Tapp Market is currently available for Android devices and is used 30.000+ sales agents and has served nearly 3.000.000 buyers in South East Asia.

“We are extremely proud of what we have been able to achieve with our initial seed funding and in demonstrating substantial proof points about our business and its unique model in the market”, explains Warren Sample, CEO of Tapp Commerce. “We are Here-For-Good, referring to the building of a long term sustainable business, but one which also ensures we leave our users better off today than we found them, yesterday. Innovative business models which empower and incentify the individuals’ success, ensures that as our customers and users win, so shall Tapp. It’s simple math.”

Series A funding enables Tapp Commerce to continue its’ hyper growth strategy

The company has seen its business soar since market launch in July 2015. This Series A type funding will further enable the Company to continue its’ hyper growth strategy, which targets connecting millions of buyers and sellers across key markets and communities in the region. Use of funds will primarily be leveraged in expanding faster into Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, with an eye to also open up Myanmar by the end of 2016. Funds will also be used in consumer acquisition efforts and evolving Tapp platform services to provide value and create stickiness in our end-user value chain, while sequentially opening up more monetization mechanisms. Funding was coordinated by Amma Private Equity out of Australia, a company who is keen to find early stage investment projects, like Tapp Commerce, which focus on innovative and hyper growth models and opportunities.

For Finland and the Nordics, this represents a significant Series A raise and also one that has a compounding effect to the Company’s existing Tekes (Finland/EU) Young Innovation Company funding, awarded earlier this year. Where some companies are raising capital in the fintech space of 5­-10 M+ USD to conquer and expand into single countries, Tapp Commerce is leveraging its financing to rapidly support moving across whole regions and empowering people, not conquering them.

“We are building a significant business based on sound fundamentals, like fees, systematic revenues and a number of related business models. Sustainable business that just works, without relying on so called traditional single business models like “advertising” alone, is an absolute game changer for setting the bar in our industry. Now the question shifts towards focus and scaling the business in order to spread the benefit to our end users”, states Tapio Järvenpää, COO at Tapp Commerce.

Tapp Commerce drives billions of people into a financial participation

Founded at the end of 2013 and originally hailing from Finland, Tapp Commerce is on a mission to literally drive billions of people into financial participation. While solving a significant problem in emerging markets, Tapp Commerce solutions are also a technology and business stack which will have a place in the Western markets too. Emerging trends of social and community commerce evidence the importance of network economics which starts to be acknowledged by Western financial institutions. Bringing trillions of dollars online from cash economies in emerging markets is significant, but Tapp Commerce aims for serving global financial economy within few years.

Tapp Commerce stands for trust and social responsibility through products and services, branding and, most importantly, people. Currently there are 77 Tappians (staff) working across the Company. Tapp Commerce is expanding its cash-in network by tens of thousands of human mobile points of sale, ie. grassroots sellers and reaches several millions of consumers within coming months. Within the first two and a half years Tapp Commerce has already expanded its operations in Indonesia 2015, Philippines Q1 2016, with the opening of Thailand and Vietnam in Q3 2016. Myanmar market feasibility study has started to assure the market launch still before the year end 2016.

“Tapp Commerce is building the next generation financial plumbing for emerging markets and transitioning that cash economy online. Tapp’s innovation comes from taking real world economics & commerce models (e.g. how people operate in the real world), removing the friction in transacting & mapping those into a digital format. This is where technology, business, and social responsibility intertwines with financial inclusion to form up the “intersection economy”. We have our eyes wide open to the state of the world today and want to bring this innovation global within a few years”, says Sample.

Awards and nominations:

Young Innovative Companies, The Finnish Funding Agency of Innovation (Tekes)
Smart Awards Asia 2016, Cards & Payments Conference, Best New eCommerce Merchant offering in Asia
Recipient of the United Nations Development Program, Business Call to Action Membership