KUALA LUMPUR: Funding Societies, Southeast Asia’s largest digital finance platform for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), has secured a third credit facility with HSBC under its ASEAN Growth Fund, raising its total credit facilities from HSBC to over US$100 million (RM436 million).
According to BERNAMA News Agency, the transaction includes two previously extended annual credit facilities, reaffirming HSBC’s ongoing support for MSMEs through the platform since 2022. Funding Societies’ co-founder and group chief executive officer, Kelvin Teo, expressed that HSBC’s sustained backing allows the company to further explore scalable debt financing for growth and profitability, advancing financial inclusion for underbanked and underserved SMEs in the region.
Meanwhile, HSBC Singapore’s head of corporates and business banking, Harish Venkatesan, noted that this third credit facility will enable the bank to continue supporting Funding Societies’ efforts to provide financing solutions to MSMEs. He added that
this will contribute to the building blocks of societies in the ASEAN region, expressing anticipation for continued support for Funding Societies as they expand their business and for the underlying MSMEs in the region through the HSBC ASEAN Growth Fund.
Launched in March 2024, the US$1 billion HSBC ASEAN Growth Fund aims to support Singapore-based digital platforms in bolstering e-commerce across the region. The statement noted that while the Asia-Pacific region has experienced rapid middle-class growth and expanded access to formal banking and digital commercial environments, it still faces a US$2.5 trillion (RM10.9 trillion) credit access gap, accounting for over half of the global shortfall in small business financing.
The statement further highlighted that up to 99.9 percent of enterprises are MSMEs, contributing between 35 percent and 69 percent of each country’s gross domestic product. Since its inception in 2015, Funding Societies has disbursed over US$4 billion (RM17.4 billion) in business financin
g, benefiting more than 100,000 businesses across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Additionally, it has processed an annualised gross transaction value of US$1.4 billion (RM6.1 billion) in payments since entering the payments sector in late 2022.