Finverse is based in Hong Kong and has the ambitious goal of enabling open banking across Asia-Pacific. Finverse recently emerged from stealth mode with seed funding of $1.8 million. It is now available in four markets (Hong Kong and the Philippines), and has connections to 30 banks. Stephane Lesaffre, founder and chief executive officer of Finverse, told TechCrunch the startup plans to launch in one market per quarter with the goal to cover approximately 75% of all consumer and SME banks in each location.
Finverses Seed Round Participants were Fide Ventures and Golden Gate Ventures, SixThirty Ventures, Venturra, Ventures, and angel investors.
Finverse is one of a number of fintechs creating APIs that make it easier to share financial data. Plaid, Tink and Truelayer are two of the most well-known examples. (Finverses seed financing included angel investment from Truelayer employees.
Prior to founding Finverse in 2020 Lesaffre worked as the senior product manager for financial data integrations at NerdWallet. He was responsible for account aggregation APIs such as Yodlee and Plaid.
Plaid won the U.S. Market because it was reliable, Lesaffre stated. Although it didn't offer the same data coverage as Yodlee. However, it provided a very specific set of data that was very well-structured and easy to build. NerdWallet taught me that bad data can be worse than good data.
Finverse hopes to do the exact same thing in the Asia-Pacific region, by creating reliable APIs and data integrations. We are a core of a consent-based data pipeline where consumers allow Finverse to connect their accounts and share them with other fintechs, explained Lesaffre.
These data can include account balances, transactions histories, bank statements, and transaction history. This data can be used by financial institutions to get a picture of consumers' assets and liabilities. It can also be used to calculate income, conduct credit checks, and assess ability to repay.
Lesaffre stated that Finverses early adopters include mainly fintech startups and a mix SME lending providers as well as buy now, pay tomorrow services.
Although Finverses APIs are available for many different uses, most potential clients are focused on SME or consumer lending. Many want to move from a manual process where applicants have to upload documents to a digital credit decision that takes as little as one second.
Finverse currently focuses on consumers who have bank accounts or credit histories. However, it plans to expand its reach and add digital wallets, Neobanks and other institutions. Financial tracking will be a future use case as more people in Asia begin to use e-wallets and investment apps, as well as online bank accounts.
You will find that many of your customers have another primary account at a bigger bank. This means that smaller digital banks can get a complete view of their customers. A way to achieve this is to allow consumers to track all of their accounts from one place.
Finverses APIs can also be used for cross-border payments verification compliance and KYC.
Finantier and Brankas are two other open banking startups that focus on Southeast Asia. Lesaffre explained that Finverse's approach is unique because it targets the entire Asia-Pacific region and not just a few markets. The new funding will be used for the company's engineering and business development departments.
