Razorpay, a platform which provides digital payments and financial services to businesses, on Tuesday said that it will be expanding into the Southeast Asian markets and has picked up a majority stake in Malaysian-fintech Curlec. With the acquisition, Razorpay looks to expand its core payments stack services to Southeast Asian customers and launch recurring payments in newer geographies. It is also expected to enable cross-border payments for local Southeast Asian businesses with the Curlec acquisition.

To start with, Razorpay will take its entire payments stack including payment links, payment pages and gateway services to the Malaysian markets. Overtime, it is expected to take these services to key Southeast Asian geographies of Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, to name a few.

As a part of the deal, the entire Curlec team will be joining Razorpay. While the Indian fintech major declined to comment on the exact contours of the acquisition deal, it said that it has valued Curlec at roughly $20 million.

Razorpay will also look to invest more and acquire 100% stake in Malaysian fintech over time, it said.

With this Razorpay joins the likes of Indian fintechs including Pine Labs, which have expanded internationally to the South-east Asian markets.

The acquisition comes just months after the Indian fintech raised $375 million in December, last year, at a valuation of $7.5 billion co-led by hedge and private equity firms Lone Pine Capital, Alkeon Capital and TCV. The company has mopped up a total of $741.5 million in equity investments since its inception in 2014.

“We are seeing that Malaysia is becoming similar to India, in terms of fintech and digital payments. By combining forces with Curlec, we can significantly ramp up in Southeast Asia. Curlec has scaled five-fold since 2018, and with the acquisition, we will have a local team now in Malaysia and the Southeast Asian region,” said Harshil Mathur, cofounder and chief executive officer (CEO), Razorpay.

Founded in 2018, Curlec builds new-age technology solutions on top of existing payments infrastructure, to make it easier for companies of all sizes to collect recurring payments.

Curlec claims to currently work with hundreds of businesses across Malaysia with notable names including insurance company AXA, fintech lending firm Funding Societies, and Axiata Digital to name a few.

“We are incredibly excited to be combining forces with Harshil, Shashank and the Razorpay team. We’ve long admired what they’ve built in India from afar and are fully aligned with a common vision of building payment and banking solutions from top to bottom, for any business. We look forward to the next phase of our journey and scaling together across Malaysia and Southeast Asia,” said Zac Liew, cofounder & CEO of Curlec.

The current deal marks the first international acquisition for Razorpay, and its fourth till date. Prior to this, Razorpay acquired – AI-based risk tech software platform, TERA Finlabs in 2021; payroll and HR management solution, Opfin in 2019 and fraud analytics platform, Thirdwatch in 2018.

Apart from acquisitions, Razorpay has also invested in B2B logistics provider, Shiprocket and small business advisory platform MSMEx, till date.

At present, Razorpay serves over 8 million businesses including the likes of Facebook, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, Cred and recorded over $60 billion in total payment volume (TPV) as of early December 2021.