Viva Republica, the firm behind South Korea's wildly successful payments app Toss, has raised an $80 million round, valuing the firm at $1.1 billion.
The latest tranche of investment was led by Kleiner Perkins and Ribbit Capital, with participation from existing investors including Altos Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Goodwater Capital, KTB Network, Novel, PayPal and Qualcomm Ventures
The new round brings the company's total funding to $196 million, following a $40 million raise in June.
Started as a P2P money transfer service in 2015, Toss has now expanded into a platform providing a full suite of financial services from a partner network of 25 financial services companies. Beyond money transfers, users can access an array of consumer finance services within the app, including a financial dashboard, credit score management, customised loan/insurance plans, as well as multiple investment services.
With more than 8 million registered users, a customer base that has nearly doubled from a year ago, Toss is expected to process over $17 billion in transaction run-rate and has a total trackable monthly transaction volume of about $10 billion.
Speaking to TechCrunch, Toss founder SG LEE says: “We want to help financial institutions to build on top of Toss… we’re kind of building an Amazon for the financial services industry."
With more than 20% of Koreans already using the service, Toss is now looking at opportunities for international expansion into neighbouring South East Asian markets.