Scaling a Unified Commerce Platform for SMEs with Growth Debt in a Tight Funding Market

Founded in 2019, Qashier is a Singapore-based hardware-enabled SaaS company and one of Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing unified commerce platforms for SMEs. It provides POS and integrated payment solutions for restaurants, retail, and service businesses, combining sleek proprietary terminals with cloud-based software. The platform supports POS and payment processing, QR and tap-to-pay, online ordering, inventory and staff management, loyalty and CRM, multi-location connectivity, and analytics. Hardware is the entry point, while subscriptions and transaction processing drive scalable recurring revenue. Qashier now powers over 12,000 businesses, processes more than US$1B in transactions annually, and has a strong presence across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines.

Qashier hit a critical inflection point: strong product–market fit, rapid merchant adoption, and growing transaction volume — but limited runway in a tightening venture funding environment. To keep scaling, the company needed to invest further in field sales and go-to-market, particularly in markets where in-person merchant onboarding is essential. However, securing debt proved difficult: SME and F&B segments naturally exhibit higher logo churn; the loss-leading hardware model was poorly understood by many lenders; and the interplay between hardware, subscription, and payments needed clearer articulation. More than 20 lenders had been approached with little progress, not due to weak fundamentals, but due to narrative misalignment and broader caution towards emerging-stage fintech. Qashier targeted ~US$4M in growth capital, primarily to expand sales in Singapore and the Philippines.

Qashier engaged Fuse Capital to reframe the story and run a targeted process with specialist lenders. After deep analysis of unit economics, retention, payback, and transaction-led monetisation, Fuse repositioned Qashier as a scalable fintech platform with recurring revenue, strong revenue retention, and increasing monetisation per installed terminal. Engagement was timed to coincide with the award of a regulated payments licence in Singapore, further strengthening lender confidence. Qashier secured a US$3M growth capital facility designed to support sales expansion and go-to-market execution across Southeast Asia. With this facility, the company expanded its sales force, increased terminal deployment and subscription volume, grew transaction processing at pace, and extended runway ahead of a future equity raise — creating a blueprint for using debt to scale hardware-enabled SaaS in fragmented SME markets without equity dilution.