Singapore’s Ecommerce Shopmatic Raises $5.7m to Expand into Indonesia

1. Singapore’s Shopmatic raises $5.7m to expand to Indonesia, the Philippines

Shopmatic is an ecommerce enabler for small businesses as well as individual entrepreneurs. Apart from building and managing their own stores, sellers can use it to get on to multiple ecommerce marketplaces, put ‘buy’ buttons on their social media pages, and so on.

Today Shopmatic announced pre-series A funding of US$5.7 million led by Singapore-based VC firm ACP and Spring, which is an agency of Singapore’s ministry of trade and industry.

Shopmatic will, similarly, partner with local payment gateways in Indonesia and other markets. It has also focused on the needs of mobile-first markets like India and Indonesia.

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2. Google and Indonesia reach agreement in tax dispute

Indonesia’s government reached a settlement with Alphabet Inc.’s Google over a long-running tax dispute, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said.

Indonesia has been more strictly enforcing tax payments since Minister Sri Mulyani took office last year. Other technology giants like Facebook and Twitter with large user bases in Indonesia could be targeted next.

Part of the problem is the complexity of Google’s corporate structure, which makes it difficult to determine where revenues are generated. The firm is facing similar issues elsewhere. It settled for $185 million in its tax dispute with the UK last year.