Southeast Asia is a slightly different market for venture capital funding, because there isn’t much deal activity compared with China and India. That has started to change, with more investors heading to high-growth countries like Vietnam, lured by its young demographic and untapped markets. The sentiment has gradually become more optimistic. From being laggards in Asia, as China and India mopped up most of the PE-VC funding, Southeast Asian nations are reaching a tipping point. According to a recent report by Google and Temasek, the region’s 260 million internet users — with an additional 3.8 million coming online every month — is spurring its internet economy.

In the Philippines, the FinTech ecosystem remains modest (see chart on page S4/2). But according to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Deputy Governor Nestor A. Espenilla, Jr., the growth trajectory of the local FinTech scene is mimicking that for the rest of the world, with investments flowing into the payments and underserved segments of the market.

Ayannah is a leading provider of digital commerce and payment services to migrants and the unbanked at the base of the economic pyramid. We enrich the lives of our customers by allowing them to send and share values over the social and mobile web. Ayannah operates several services that allow convenient online and mobile giving, selling and buying on an award-winning technology platform. Sendah is an online gifting service that lets anyone send a variety of gift items to anywhere in the Philippines. Sendah Direct is our award-winning online retailing service for enterprising individuals and groups who want to resell all kinds of electronic and physical goods and services. Sendah Remit is an online remittance service that allows inter-operable international and domestic remittance transactions across different networks.

With PayRemit, Filipinos in the UAE can now shop on Sendah, Ayannah’s gift-remittance service and send airtime credits (load), food and celebration packages, micro-insurance, gift certificates, flowers, groceries, and more to their loved ones in the Philippines. According to Sendah Product Manager Bryan Jadina, “Our focus is on giving migrants options that can really improve the quality of life of their beneficiaries. Compared to plain cash remittance, Sendah gives Filipino migrant workers assurance that their hard-earned money is being used for its intended purpose. Plus, given our partnerships with domestic and international vendors, we are able to offer our customers a number of discount deals, which works out cheaper than buying stuff abroad and sending them via a balikbayan box.” Sendah customers in the UAE can pay for their online purchases in any of PayRemit’s over 100 partner outlets/remittance centers.