2C2P flies beyond Southeast Asia with expansion to South, Central Asia

By Anisa Menur A. Maulani for e27

Southeast Asian payments company 2C2P announced today that it has signed partnership deals with Nepal’s largest private bank Himalayan Bank Limited (HBL), its national flag carrier Nepal Airlines, and Kazakhstan’s principal airline and flag carrier, Air Astana.

2C2P will be processing online and offline payment transactions for the companies. HBL debit and credit card holders can now transact internationally and domestically with merchants that accept Visa, MasterCard, JCB, Unionpay International and Diners Club International. Nepal Airlines and Air Astana customers can also purchase their flight tickets online with the new partnership–a move to modernise the previously manual cash-based process.

“South and Central Asia’s technology and financial landscape is fast-evolving,” said 2C2P Founder and Group CEO Aung Kyaw Moe in a press statement. “These young financial markets present huge opportunities to businesses to tap into e-commerce, opening new revenue streams among new and existing customers.”

Also Read: A quick peek at Kazakhstan’s startup scene

“We’re pleased to be working with some of the leading retailers in these regions to take advantage of key economic and demographic trends around e-commerce adoption, rising urbanisation and consumer affluence, and the boom in South and Central Asia’s travel and tourism sector,” he added.

The Travel and tourism sectors in South and Central Asia are growing rapidly in the past years. According to an estimate by The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), travel and tourism contributed US$57 billion (2.4 per cent of GDP) to the economy in South Asia in 2014, forecast to increase 6.7 per cent annually to US$116.5 billion (2.6 per cent of GDP) by 2025.

As for Kazakhstan, The Economist’s Intelligence Unit estimates that e-commerce in the country crossed US$5 billion a year in 2015, which surpasses even Singapore’s own market.

Also Read: Humanitarian tech tools that anyone can use to help Nepal

2C2P offers omni-channel payment services tailored to the needs of financial institutions, e-commerce and m-commerce businesses, and retailers. It enables payment acceptance through credit and debit cards, as well as through bank channels such as ATMs, internet banking and mobile banking. It even facilitates cash acceptance via payment counters–a feature that remains relevant across the Southeast Asian market, with its low credit card penetration levels.

Raising its Series C round in April 2015, 2C2P has been dubbed as the ‘PayPal challenger’ in Southeast Asia.

First appeared at e27