In early 2020, two founders who had both been through Y Combinator started talking about a merger. Tianwei Liu ran Xfers in Singapore. Hendra Kwik ran Payfazz in Indonesia. Their companies solved different halves of the same problem, and a year later they announced one group.
Liu's route was an engineer's. He studied computer and electronic engineering at the National University of Singapore, graduating in 2010, and worked as a software engineer, reportedly including a stint at Amazon's Lab126 hardware lab. The company's own account says that he saw the trouble of moving money first hand, which led him to start Xfers. Little else about his childhood or family is public.
Kwik became group chief executive and Liu his deputy; each kept running his own company.
Xfers began around 2015 as payment infrastructure: a way for businesses in Singapore and later Indonesia to send and receive money without the friction of bank forms. That is unglamorous work. Regulators set the rules, banks control the rails, and each market has to be licensed separately.
Payfazz had built the other piece, a network of agents who offer financial services to micro and small businesses and to people who have never had a proper bank account. In March 2021 Payfazz put US$30 million into Xfers and the two formed Fazz Financial Group. Kwik became group chief executive and Liu his deputy; each kept running his own company.
The merger had a plain logic. Xfers had payments technology and a Singapore licence. Payfazz had reach into small Indonesian merchants. Together they described a platform for payments, financing and digital assets aimed at the businesses that banks serve poorly. Series B backers included Insignia Venture Partners and B Capital, with Tiger Global in the round. In September 2022, the group raised a US$100 million Series C to build lending and an all-in-one app, and said it served more than 150,000 businesses.
The cost is the one every combination pays. Two teams, two regulators, two cultures and a lending book that is only as good as the economy. Liu also went on to lead StraitsX, a stablecoin company, which suggests his own attention moved toward digital assets. Fazz's recent revenue and profit are not public.
For a founder, the useful detail is the timing and the humility of it. Liu and Kwik did not wait to be acquired. They spoke as equals, in the middle of a pandemic, and chose to be one company with a bigger map.