First Circle secures $4.9M credit facility from Cathay United Bank

What's the deal? First Circle, a Philippine fintech firm, has secured a $4.9M credit facility. The company said the funding will strengthen its capacity as demand rises for working-capital loans, business loans, and solar financing.

First Circle is a Securities and Exchange Commission-regulated financing company, not a bank. It offers unsecured online credit lines and loans of up to 20 million pesos ($325,000) to small and medium enterprises.

The company said it has extended 16 billion pesos ($260M) in loans to more than 5,000 Philippine businesses.

Why now? Small-business credit access remains severely limited in the Philippines. The International Finance Corporation, citing the Asian Development BankDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → SME Monitor 2023, said SME credit penetration stood at just 2.2% of GDP in 2023 — a gap that fintechs like First Circle are trying to fill.

The credit facility comes from Cathay United BankDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which opened its Manila branch in 2015. For the Taiwanese lender, the transaction adds to its growing corporate banking activity in the Philippines.

The signal: First Circle sits at the "breakout" stage according to Dealroom, suggesting it has moved beyond early traction into a scaling phase — one now backed by institutional debt rather than just venture equity. The involvement of Cathay United Bank, a corporate investor, underscores a wider pattern in Southeast Asian fintech: as alternative lenders mature, foreign banks are increasingly willing to extend credit lines that fund their loan books, bridging the gap that local banking infrastructure has yet to close.

Read more: techinasia.com