Malaysian startup iMoney has raised $500,000 in seed funding, revealed co-founder and CEO Lee Ching Wei today. The online personal finance platform raised the funds from Asia Venture Group (AVG) and will use the cash for its expansion across Southeast Asia.
Founded in April last year, the idea behind iMoney is that it’s a free service that helps regular people make comparisons between banks for loans, credit cards, savings, and other banking services. It has data for over 200 credit cards, 500 loan packages, and thousands of investment products.
The next stop for iMoney is Singapore, for which a beta site is already online. Ching tells us that Singapore should start to get a lot more traction for them in July and August as the Singaporean site pads out its financial data and information.
A former wealth advisor, Ching explains in today’s announcement:
Now, in 2013 we are aiming to generate more than $1 billion in business to banks and insurance companies in the region. We are well on track to achieve this objective – along with becoming the number one destination for financial matters for consumers in all of Southeast Asia.
iMoney was started up, as many startups are, out of personal frustration at a lack of an easy and objective way to compare the rates on loans and credit cards.
The Malaysian iMoney site already gets about 150,000 visitors per month.
We saw a similar startup in the form of Singapore-based LoanGarage pitch at our Startup Arena Jakarta competition last year.
Ching pitched iMoney on the Malaysian entrepreneurial reality TV show Make the Pitch last summer, and you can see that pitch here: