Ayoconnect Announces Series B+ 199 Billion Rupiah Funding Led by SIG Venture Capital

Startups open finance Ayoconnect again announces continued funding of $13 million or more than 460 billion Rupiah in a series B+ round. The investment was led by SIG Venture Capital, followed by Innovation Capital as well as several previous investors, including PayU and Prosus.

With this additional funding, Ayoconnect has managed to raise a total of $28 million or equivalent to 420 billion Rupiah for equity funding. Previously the company had announced the closing of the round series B in early 2022 led by Tiger Global.

This fresh fund will focus on product and technology development, as well as investment in improving leadership qualities and empowering teams. This includes new solutions for payments, data and banking as well as new APIs for account opening and card issuance.

Ayoconnect Founder & CEO Jakob Rost said that investor confidence is the result of the attraction to the rapid development of solutions offered by Ayoconnect in the Indonesian market. The company has succeeded in forging synergistic partnerships, launching various products that have a big impact, and increasing the customer reach of the banks that use its services.

"This funding will accelerate the achievement of our vision of bringing new API-based solutions to our banking clients and business partners. The next 12 months will be an important time for us to execute innovations and launch new solutions faster, as well as invest wisely, ” he added.

Akshay Bajaj of SIG Venture Capital said Ayoconnect has been running high volume APIs for years and is very well positioned to help customers launch compelling and profitable use cases quickly and securely.

Ayoconnect Innovation

Founded in 2016, Ayoconnect is rebranding from startup fintech payment aggregatorCome on pop. In mid-August 2020, the company shifted its business focus to a billing network provider (open bill network) with a One API solution that allows billing companies to expand their payment points.

Ayoconnect launches the first Open Finance API to enable non-banking financial institutions to initiate payments direct discharge recurring from customer savings accounts. The company cooperates with banks to provide direct discharge which can be accessed via a single API. These include BRI, Bank Mandiri, CIMB Niaga, BNI, Danamon, Bank Syariah Indonesia, and Bank Neo Commerce.

Focused on Southeast Asia, the Ayoconnect API makes it easy for businesses to develop a variety of financial services instead of building their own infrastructure. The company is already working with regulators and banks incumbent, and was recently awarded a Category 1 Payment Service Provider license by Bank Indonesia (BI). Apart from Ayoconnect, other players who also offer similar solutions include Brig, Safe and Finantier.

Recently, Ayoconnect announced a strategic partnership with a solution-focused technology consulting firm cloud, artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence) and data analytics, Searce. This collaboration aims to accelerate the acceleration of banking digitalization in Indonesia by utilizing Application Programming Interface (API) technology.

Combining both experience and expertise, Searce and Ayoconnect are said to help financial institutions, startups and businesses launch new digital service products quickly and widen access to finance to achieve the target of 90% financial inclusion by 2024 in Indonesia.

Other financial services that have been launched by Ayoconnect clients include embedded payments partnered with PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI), to launch new ticketing and productivity features on KAI Access mobile app, which allows users to buy credit, subscribe to internet data and electricity tokens).

The company is also partnering with Bank Syariah, the largest Islamic bank in Indonesia, to add new digital and mobile capabilities with the aim of financial inclusion and greater economic growth among its customers.

To date, Ayoconnect has served 200 customers, including large banks, financial institutions, startups unicornand fintech through more than 4.000 embedded financial products. Its API includes two categories: API open banking and payment service APIs, with the aim of building an ecosystem open finance most comprehensive in Southeast Asia.