This article is an abridged version of a post on Momentum Works’ Chinese blog on WeChat.
So YouTrip, which raised US$25 million in May this year, has competition now. Both TransferWise and Revolut are launching their stored value cards for Singapore market this month.
Both took quite a while to prepare the launch – which gave YouTrip a time gap to built its service up. The larger than usual round announced May, if we interpret it correctly, could be used to defend against bigger, usually London based, players lurking around.
Revolut has thus raised US$336 million in total, while Transferwise is now valued at US$3.5 billion.
Before these, the main competitors of YouTrip were the money changers. Of course, those traditional players were no match to a VC-backed tech company in channel, cost structure, and customer understanding. YouTrip, or any player, could, theoretically, quickly catch up in volume.
Although all the players claim that their products are differentiated or superior, we believe that good features will eventually be copied and they will become very similar to each other. At the end of the day, factors such as pricing, marketing and convenience of use would determine who gets the upper hand.
These are factors which could be bought by capital, with a good execution team and decision making structure.
Btw, do not forget Grab is issuing virtual cards as well – and physical GrabPay MasterCards are probably not that far away.
No wonder share prices of both MasterCard and Visa are in a good trajectory: