Singapore-based fintech Thunes, which provides a cross-border B2B payment service, raised a $72M Series C led by Marshall Wace at a $900M+ valuation
Thunes, a Singapore and London-based fintech that has built a payments platform for businesses to send money to each other internationally …
Context & Ripple Effects
Thunes has been on a steady funding ladder since it spun out of TransferTo in early 2019: a $10M Series A, a $60M Series B that put it in roughly 100 countries, and a further $60M from Insight Partners in 2021. This $72M Series C at a $900M-plus valuation keeps that cadence intact and puts the company within sight of unicorn territory.
The round also lands Thunes squarely in a Singapore B2B payments cohort that has attracted large checks — Nium crossed the $1B mark with its own $200M Series D two years earlier — and the lead here is notable: Marshall Wace is a hedge fund, not a traditional venture firm.
First-order effects
- Thunes gains $72M and a $900M-plus valuation, with Marshall Wace's lead signaling that crossover capital now sets the price for its growth stage rather than venture-only syndicates.
- Nium's earlier $1B-plus round becomes the local benchmark Thunes must clear, sharpening the head-to-head between Singapore's two flagship cross-border B2B payment networks.
Second-order effects
- Competing cross-border payment platforms face pressure to match the pace of Thunes' fundraising cadence — four rounds in four years — or cede ground on network coverage in emerging markets.
- Hedge-fund participation validates late-stage fintech payments infrastructure as an asset class, likely drawing more non-traditional investors into subsequent rounds for companies like Nium and Airwallex.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, cross-border B2B payments consolidates around a handful of well-capitalized Singapore-based networks whose scale in emerging-market corridors becomes the moat, with valuations set increasingly by crossover funds.
- The trajectory continued after this round: Thunes went on to raise a $150M Series D co-led by Apis Partners and Vitruvian Partners to fund US expansion, suggesting these rounds are building toward geographic expansion beyond emerging markets rather than regional consolidation alone.
The trend: Cross-border B2B payments infrastructure is scaling through successive mega-rounds funded increasingly by crossover capital, with Singapore-based networks competing to convert emerging-market corridor coverage into global platforms.