Dowsure Technologies, a FinTech startup which helps facilitate cross platform selling, announced Monday (Feb. 21) that it has closed a Series B round for $20 million.
Dowsure is based in Shenzhen, China, and works on cross-border eCommerce, providing “unified” lending experiences. Some of the companies that have worked with it include Amazon, eBay, Shopee, Lazada and DTC, according to the press release.
Cross-border eCommerce has seen some attention in the past year — there are over six million sellers on Amazon, and half of them are from China, per the release. Because of traditional loan assessment logic, many of these sellers are considered “underbanked” as they don’t have strong fixed collateral support or a solid financial track record.
Dowsure has reportedly helped Amazon through building a proprietary assessment model for store owners, including data application programming interface (API) connectivity and account locking features. The company has also worked with Chinese banks to enable pure credit loan based on store data without any collaterals.
The release says Dowsure’s assessment model and algorithm can be used for other assets with online cash flow, but are still considered underbanked by regular banks. The company wants to “unleash the value” of digital assets in the online world.
“The market Dowsure is targeting has huge potential and sizing,” Mark Mai, founder of investor VenturesLab, said in the release. “We recognize Dowsure’s approach to solve the underbanked issued in cross-border eCommerce industry as the best practice in this market, and … we’re confident that Dowsure will continue to innovate and scale to become a FinTech unicorn soon.”
China has reportedly been making strides toward a fully cashless economy, with two small private banks — Zhongguancun Bank and NewUp Bank of Liaoning — saying last month that they’d end services related to bank notes and coins.
See also: China Nears Fully Cashless Economy
Chinese residents have been relying more on WeChat Pay and Alipay rather than cash.
Beijing has also been working on a pilot scheme for digital currency called the e-yuan, which has been added as a payment method for WeChat Pay. JD.com has also begun accepting the e-yuan in its online stores.
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