Gree Ventures has participated in a Series C round of funding for Philippines-based digital payments business Ayannah. Wavemaker Labs, Golden Gate Ventures, IMJ Investment Partners and Beenos Asia also participated.

Veritas Mobile Holdings, Ltd., which operates as Ayannah (“Ayannah”), a leading provider of digital commerce and payments services for migrants and the unbanked, raised additional equity financing from leading Japanese early stage internet and technology investor, GREE Ventures, Inc. (“GREE Ventures”). GREE Venture joins other institutional investors such as Wavemaker Labs Pte. Ltd., Golden Gate Ventures Incubator Annex Pte. Ltd., IMJ Investment Partners Pte. Ltd. and Beenos Asia Pte. Ltd. in Ayannah's upsized follow-on round.

Despite the booming local scene, there’ still a lot information asymmetry between what’s going on-the-ground, and what entrepreneurs and investors from Silicon Valley know. After all, the Philippines really isn’t a mainstay on Techcrunch or Mashable. When I met a partner from Kleiner Perkins, her first question was “What’s going on out there? I’ve never visited, but all the social networking and digital media startups we’ve looked at always gets a ton of traffic from the Philippines.”

Ayannah, a digital payments startup based in the Philippines, has raised $1 million in new funding from Japanese venture capital firms IMJ Investment Partners and Beenos, the investment vehicle of Teruhide Sato, president and group CEO of netprice.com. Returning investors led by Siemer Ventures and Golden Gate Ventures also participated in the round. This brings the total Ayannah has raised so far to over $4.5 million.