Andrea Baronchelli and Giovanni Casinelli founded Aspire in Singapore in 2018. The company started with working capital loans for small and medium-sized businesses that banks tended to overlook.
Customers kept asking for more. They wanted to hold money in several currencies, pay suppliers, issue corporate cards and collect from customers. Aspire added cross-border accounts, cards, payables and receivables, plus links to Xero, QuickBooks and NetSuite.
A $32.5 million Series A arrived in August 2019. Total funding across its rounds now exceeds $290 million.
In February 2023 Aspire closed a $100 million Series C co-led by Lightspeed and Sequoia Capital SEA. Its annualised total payment volume had tripled in a year to $12 billion, and it served over 15,000 businesses.