Singapore-based Thunes, a cross-border payments service, raises $60M led by Insight Partners
Context & Ripple Effects
Thunes' raise caps a fast escalation for the TransferTo spinout: a $10M Series A led by GGV in 2019, then a $60M Series B in September 2020 when the company was already operating in roughly 100 countries. This round keeps that pace while shifting the investor mix toward a large US growth firm.
For Insight Partners, the check extends a pattern rather than opens one — the firm had just led Singapore-based spend-management startup Spenmo's $34M Series A four months earlier, making cross-border and B2B payments infrastructure its recurring Singapore thesis.
First-order effects
- Insight Partners now holds positions across two Singapore fintech bets in quick succession (Thunes, Spenmo), concentrating its Southeast Asia exposure around payments rails rather than consumer apps.
- Thunes gains fresh capital to scale a network already spanning ~100 countries, where reach into emerging-market payout corridors is its core differentiator against bank-led correspondent chains.
Second-order effects
- Rival multi-currency players face pressure to match the funding tempo — YouTrip's later $50M Series B shows Singapore wallet-and-payments startups responding with larger institutional rounds of their own.
- US growth investors validating an emerging-markets payments network lowers the cost of the next raise for regional infrastructure plays, pulling more late-stage money toward Singapore-based B2B fintech.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, cross-border B2B payments consolidate around venture-backed network operators that own emerging-market corridors end-to-end, displacing legacy correspondent-banking intermediaries as the default rail.
- Capital concentration in Singapore as the neutral hub for payments infrastructure deepens, with global firms like Insight Partners routing their Asia fintech exposure through the city-state.
The trend: Cross-border payments infrastructure for emerging markets is drawing progressively larger institutional checks, with global VCs anchoring their Southeast Asia strategies through Singapore-based networks.