The move advances Linklogis’ plans to open a digital bank in Singapore in early 2022, utilizing the digital banking license it was awarded by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in December 2020.

Linklogis is also currently in the process of establishing a new Singapore-based entity, Olea, in a joint venture with Standard Chartered. Olea is a fully-digitised trade finance origination and distribution platform that aims to bring together institutional investors seeking opportunities in an alternative asset class with businesses requiring supply chain financing.

“Singapore is a strategic jurisdiction for international trade and a place where we have already created important joint ventures,” said Charles Song, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Linklogis. “The timing of our arrival in Singapore corresponds to the ramp-up of these joint ventures” — namely, Olea with Standard Chartered, and the future digital bank in partnership with Greenland Group.

Founded in 2016 with initial backing from Tencent, Linklogis has rapidly cemented a position as a key provider of supply chain finance technology in China and is now growing operations in Southeast Asia, before expanding worldwide.

“Singapore is one of the region’s most important financial hubs,” said Song. “It provides the perfect setting to offer trade finance programs, with a regulatory environment that is straightforward and digital-friendly.”

The company raised HK$8.967 billion (US$1.153 billion) in its April 2021 Hong Kong initial public offering, from investors including BlackRock, EDBI (the investment arm of Singapore's Economic Development Board) and Fidelity.

Linklogis specializes in providing technology for supply chain finance — the company’s cloud-native solutions optimize the payment cycle of supply chain transactions and digitalize the entire workflow of supply chain finance. As Song puts it, “Linklogis serves both corporate clients and financial institutions, as well as SMEs. To serve our clients, we strive to leverage our strong tech capabilities to deliver relevant, reliable products.”

“Tech is our greatest advantage,” says Song. “For many fintech companies, blockchain is merely a buzzword, but Linklogis possesses very real capabilities in this area. Over 60% of our 900 employees are developers. The size of our tech team is unprecedented —and the speed at which we’re developing new products is quite astonishing.”

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has assessed the funding gap for SMEs at US$5.2 trillion, with the bulk of that demand in Asia. Linklogis intends to leverage innovative technology to address part of that gap.

“We look forward to working with Singaporean companies of varying sizes to streamline supply chain finance and take advantage of the suite of tech tools we offer to help businesses trade more efficiently,” said Song.