Secai Marche, a Tokyo-headquartered startup operating a farm-to-table fresh food distribution platform across Southeast Asia, has closed an additional financing round led by NTT Docomo Ventures and Synexia Ventures.
As per the agreement, the startup has entered into a strategic partnership with NTT Data to digitise invoicing and payments for Malaysia’s HORECA (hotel, restaurant, and catering) sector.
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The deal marks a shift in Secai Marche’s product roadmap: from pure logistics and marketplace services to embedding payments, invoicing, and financial products, such as buy now, pay later (BNPL), supply chain finance, and microloans for farmers and small producers. The move targets long-standing inefficiencies in Malaysia’s food procurement workflows, where manual invoicing and payment processes create back-office burdens and working capital headaches across the supply chain.
Why payments matter for fresh food distribution
Secai Marche’s platform connects producers directly with restaurants, retailers and other buyers, handling ordering, logistics and market development. The company argues that while physical distribution has seen incremental improvement, the transactional layer (invoicing, payment reconciliation, and financing) remains stubbornly analogue in many Southeast Asian HORECA markets. That gap not only slows operators but also leaves smallholder farmers exposed to irregular cash flows and delayed payments.
“Procurement, invoicing and payment workflows remain highly analogue, leaving substantial inefficiencies that can constrain business growth,” Secai Marche’s representative director said in a statement. The company plans to integrate NTT DATA’s payment and invoicing solutions into its marketplace to provide a unified service that covers procurement through to settlement.
For restaurants, automated invoicing and online payments can reduce human error, speed reconciliation and improve visibility into cash positions. For producers, digitised accounts payable (AP) flows can shorten receivable cycles and open the door to underwriting based on transaction histories rather than traditional collateral, a key point if Secai Marche’s BNPL and supply chain finance ambitions materialise.
NTT DATA’s role: tech, payments and ecosystem
NTT Data will supply payment and invoicing technology and collaborate on integrating those capabilities into Secai’s marketplace. Shinichiro Nishikawa, head of NTT Data’s Global Payments & Services Division, framed the collaboration as more than operational efficiency: “We believe that enhancing financial services through the utilisation of payment and invoice data can help improve companies’ capital efficiency and create new access to finance.”
That line signals a common fintech playbook: digitise flows, capture transaction data, then overlay credit and liquidity products. For NTT Data, the partnership aligns with broader ambitions to leverage enterprise payment data for financial services across markets. For Secai Marche, it could mean moving from being a logistics layer to becoming a finance-enabled supply chain platform.
Venture backers see regional scale
NTT Docomo Ventures, one of the new investors, said it backed Secai because the startup addresses fundamental pain points for farmers and HORECA operators and because the NTT Group’s assets can accelerate scale. “We have high expectations for SECAI MARCHE’s growth into a platform that connects Southeast Asia and, ultimately, the world,” Yuma Kotake, Director at NTT Docomo Ventures, said.
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Synexia Ventures is also making Secai Marche its inaugural portfolio investment. “Secai Marche has built a unique position in Southeast Asia’s farm-to-table fresh produce supply chain,” its MD Kuan Hsu said, signalling confidence that the combined JV with NTT DATA could unlock additional value.
Putting finance on top of perishables is not a trivial pursuit. Fresh produce supply chains operate on thin margins and tight timing constraints; payment products must be reliable, low-friction and closely integrated with logistics and invoicing data to succeed.
A practical case: how integration could change day-to-day operations
Today, many restaurant operators in Malaysia still receive paper invoices or spreadsheets, then manually approve payments and reconcile bank transfers. For popular eateries operating on slim margins, delayed supplier payments and opaque receivable cycles create unpredictability, forcing either precautionary cash buffers or frequent short-term borrowing.
Integrated invoicing and payments would let restaurants approve digital invoices, initiate payments from a single dashboard, and view real-time payment status. From the supplier side, producers could see when payments will arrive and, eventually, choose to monetise upcoming invoices through supply chain finance or BNPL arrangements underwritten by the platform using its transaction data.
By centralising procurement-to-payment flows, Secai Marche can also reduce reconciliation costs, a non-trivial overhead for SMEs that currently spend significant time on bookkeeping. This could be an attractive sell to restaurant chains and medium-sized caterers, which value predictable cash conversion cycles as much as timely deliveries.
Risks and execution challenges
The plan is ambitious and faces several hurdles. First, regulatory frameworks governing payments, lending, and data use vary across Southeast Asia; navigating Malaysian rules alone will require careful compliance and possibly local financial services licences. Second, underwriting credit to farmers and small vendors is inherently risky; default management and fraud prevention will be crucial. Third, customer adoption requires trust — operators and producers must be convinced that the platform’s financial services are reliable, affordable, and tailored to their cash flow patterns.
Moreover, embedded finance models often need scale to make economics work. Transaction volumes must be sufficient to justify credit exposure and to provide the data richness required for risk models. Secai Marche will need to expand its transaction footprint in Malaysia quickly while ensuring unit economics remain viable.
Strategic rationale and regional ambitions
For Secai Marche, integrating payments is a logical extension of its core marketplace. Data from orders, deliveries and invoices provides a relatively rich signal for credit assessment compared with alternative data sources. If executed well, the company could capture more of the value chain — from order placement to payment collection and financing — rather than just taking a cut on logistics or marketplace fees.
Investors’ emphasis on regional scaling suggests Secai Marche may replicate the model beyond Malaysia. However, the company will be tested first on the ground: convincing HORECA operators to switch from manual, familiar processes to an integrated, digital service and proving that financial products can actually reduce friction rather than add complexity.
Looking ahead: BNPL, supply chain finance and microloans
Secai Marche explicitly mentioned plans to explore BNPL for procurement, supply chain finance and microfinance for farmers, using accumulated transaction and invoice data to underwrite loans. Microfinance to upstream producers is a particularly appealing public-good narrative: it could stabilise upstream supply, improve quality and create longer-term relationships between producers and buyers.
Also Read: Secai Marche wins US$4M grant from Japan govt. to transform farm-direct e-commerce in SEA
But turning transaction history into credit access requires robust risk models and often access to capital or third-party underwriters. The partnership with NTT Data and backing from NTT Docomo Ventures may help here by opening institutional channels and technology resources, but execution will require both engineering and prudent financial risk management.
Bottom line
Secai Marche’s fresh capital and strategic partnership push the company into the crowded but potentially lucrative territory of embedded finance for supply chains. Its success will hinge on execution: building seamless integrations that materially reduce back-office friction, proving credit products that demonstrably help small producers and buyers, and navigating regulatory and operational risks in Malaysia before scaling across Southeast Asia.
If the farm-to-table startup can convert transaction data into reliable finance at scale, it could become a critical infrastructure layer for the region’s perishable food supply chains, but the path from marketplace to finance provider is littered with complexity. The new funding and ties to NTT Group assets give it a better shot than many, but much still depends on adoption, unit economics and risk control in the months ahead.
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