TravelWallet succeeds in attracting $15 mn Series C funding

South Korea's TravelWallet, a global payment service provider, announced on Wednesday that it has raised 19.7 billion won ($15 million) in Series C funding.

The latest funding round saw participation from SK Securities, Golden Oak Investment, Smilegate Investment, CJ Investment and BNK Securities. TravelWallet's cumulative investment now stands at 50 billion won ($38 million).

TravelWallet offers a global payment settlement service that enables users to pay at over 100 million Visa online and offline merchant locations worldwide without paying any currency exchange fees when traveling abroad or making overseas direct purchases.

Users can exchange the desired foreign currency among the currencies of 38 countries through the app, making it convenient for them to pay in different parts of the world.

The payment service supports a total of 38 currencies, including those of the US, Europe, the UK, Australia, China, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. The company does not charge any payment fees.

According to a company official, TravelWallet has simplified the complicated international settlement and payment process and built its own state-of-the-art foreign exchange trading system. This system enables the company to provide a service that offers the lowest overseas payment fees, comparable to services such as TravelPay, by significantly reducing the cost incurred in existing international transactions.

In May this year, TravelWallet plans to launch a cloud-based business-to-business (B2B) payment solution. The company aims to help other companies that want to enter the payment business by providing a cloud-based payment infrastructure.

Write to Jong-Woo Kim at jongwoo@hankyung.com