Safe Closes Series B Funding of 287 Billion Rupiah, Led by Insignia Ventures

Startups fintech solution provider open finance Brankas announced the closing of a $20 million (over 287 billion Rupiah) series B round led by Insignia Ventures Partners with participation from previous investors Beenext and Integra Partners. With this round, Brankas will expand its network, BaaS API products in six countries in Asia, and double the team from its current 100 people.

Furthermore, this round was also attended by Visa, AFG Partners and Treasury International, a venture capital company led by the founder fintech veterans Jeff Cruttenden of Acorns and Eli Broverman of Betterment.

safe was one of the participants in the accelerator program held by Visa last year. One of the innovations that Visa is working on is the issuance of digital credit cards that use Visa's data capabilities. This solution was showcased during demo day in September 2021.

In an official statement, Samir Chaibi, Principal at Insignia Ventures Partners said, Safeguards are well equipped and well positioned to support acceleration industry open financein South East Asia. We are delighted to partner with a team that has a world-class API-based infrastructure built for the key Southeast Asian market to serve emerging fintech players.

“We are also impressed by Brankas' 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 source of banking and financial data and beyond,” Chaibi said, Wednesday ( 5/1).

Currently the Brankas platform offers more than 10 BaaS APIs, including online bank account opening, credit assessment, identity verification, transactions E-commerce, and payment solutions for gig economy. Founded in 2016, the startup has a vision to democratize access to financial and identity data for banks, traditional financial institutions, and startups. fintech.

For financial institutions, the Safe API platform unlocks new digital capabilities and revenue streams such as payments online, identity verification and account opening, and by extension extending their reach, particularly to users who have historically been difficult to serve with traditional financial services.

Meanwhile for the company fintech, the Safe platform is a bridge for critical data needs for verification or assessment processes that would otherwise take longer to develop and optimize for users. These use cases are also exploited outside of financial services, such as companies E-commerce who use the Safe API to verify and secure payments on their platform.

Across industries and use cases, Safe offers compliant, reliable and secure systems at scale to simplify the local complexities of building and operating products and services fintech.

Currently, the Safe solution has been used by companies in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. In the near future, it will soon expand to Vietnam and Bangladesh through partnerships with bank players and fintech front there.

Quote from Techcrunch, the company's interest in the Safe BaaS API solution grew by up to 30% every month. There are now more than 40 financial institutions and 100 technology companies and channel partners. Since many clients from startup fintech focus on group unbanked and underbanked, Brankas partners extend to financial providers such as remittances and e-wallets.

Safes Co-Founder & CEO Todd Schweitzer says the opportunity is huge for the industry open finance in South East Asia. According to her, open finance it's more than just payment or banking. Safeguards building the next generation of financial services infrastructure in Southeast Asia has opened up new financial product development opportunities, in a region historically dominated by established incumbents.

“Thanks to our growing network of partners and customers, we are continuously deepening our understanding of this opportunity and leading the development of solutions to unlock pintu this is for them here in Southeast Asia," he said.

He continued, the year 2021 was a breakthrough year for the company because it opened up opportunities for financial institutions and companies to partner in new businesses in a way that had never been seen before for consumers in Southeast Asia.

Services open finance in Indonesia

Compared to similar players, such as Finantier and Finverse, Brankas claims to be the only company that offers a regulated payment API that allows direct bank transfers and money transfers without intermediaries, as well as cryptocurrency payments and payments. e-wallet API-connected.

Brankas himself conveyed four points related to what made him different from his competitors. First, they focus more on the "supply side" of open finance, namely helping financial institutions to become "API-ready". The solutions presented help banks to deliver commercial API products in 6 weeks or less.

Second, Brankas seeks to help the government create a competitive and well-regulated open finance economy, so that it chooses to be actively involved and chair the relevant associations for consultation. Third, the ongoing regional strategic partnership to bring new technologies and solutions to Indonesia; including with Visa, APIX, and Proxtera. And lastly, Brankas wants to always ensure that the API aggregation presented is always reliable in terms of performance and security.