Brankas, an open banking startup for Southeast Asian markets, is entering the new year with a $20 million Series B. Visa, AFG Partners, and Treasury International were other backers.
Brankas' platform has more than 10 banking-as-a-service embedded APIs, including ones for opening online bank accounts, credit scoring, identity verification, e-commerce transactions and gig economy payments. Brankas wants todemocratize access to financial and identity data. Financial institutions and banks are some of the clients.
Brankas says it has seen a 30% month-on-month growth in usage of its platform, and is now used by more than 40 banks and 100 enterprise customers. Brankas partners with financial providers like e-wallet and remittance companies to help people who don't have traditional bank accounts or credit cards.
Brankas raised its Series A in the same year that it was profiled in a profile by TechCrunch.
Brankas wants to bring Southeast Asia's banks and e- commerce into the digital era.
Brankas has been aggressively building new products during the Pandemic, which has seen great demand in its current operating markets of Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore.
Direct, for account-to-account bank transfers; Disburse for remittances directly from accounts; Pay, a no-code solution for micro-businesses to collect payments; and IPG, a platform created for large financial customers were included.
Brankas has developed four new data products, including a statement for retail and corporate transaction retrievals, balance to let people view their current and average account balances, income, which uses machine learning to identify individual income or salary, and Telco, to allow clients access to users.
Brankas has witnesses who see open finance as an example of financial inclusion and greater customer choice. Third-party apps, including e-commerce, account management and HR and payroll software, have seen more "banking-as-a-service" products, or bank products like savings accounts, cards and loans offered as "embedded finance" on them. He said that large multinational financial service providers like Visa are embracing open finance, even if it may threaten their legacy business in the short term.
He said that open finance has also been adopted by the mainstream community.
Brankas will use the new funding to double its team of 100. It plans to add more capabilities to its payments, data and banking-as-a-service product menu in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. Brankas will go live in Vietnam and Bangladesh early this year.
Brankas plans to deepen the capabilities of its payments, data and banking-as-a-service product menu in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. Soon, we will announce partnerships with digital banks in Vietnam and Bangladesh.
There are other open financeAPI startups in Southeast Asia. Brankas is the only company to offer regulated payments APIs, as well as being the only company with regional coverage, and being the only company to offer cryptocurrencies payment and wallet linking. He said that Brankas is currently developing new solutions for payments, identity and data analysis, and that it is possible to open finance for all Visa partner banks in the region.
Y Combinator backs Singapore-based open finance startup.
Brankas has an approach to market development and their ability to launch and scale their products in a regulatory compliant manner while ensuring that developers benefit from a reliable and stable.
The Asia-Pacific region's Plaid is being built by an open banking startup.
