Brankas, Southeast Asia’s leading Open Finance technology company, announced the close of its US$20m Series B investment round led by Insignia Ventures Partners with participation from existing investors Beenext and Integra Partners. With this round, Brankas aims to scale its network of more than 40 financial institutions and 100+ technology companies, expand its product menu of banking-as-a-service APIs serving customers across 6 markets in Asia, and look to double the 100-person strong team.
This latest round accelerates Brankas’ journey to provide the most reliable and comprehensive finance API platform in Asia. Since 2016, the company has been democratizing access to financial and identity data, payments initiation and other developer tools to power the next generation of fintech solutions. With a large unbanked population, Brankas has worked with non-bank providers like remittance companies and e-wallets to offer Open Finance solutions that reach previously untapped customer segments. Brankas aims to serve any company that needs financial data and embedded fintech services to empower their end users in Southeast Asia: technology companies, traditional brick-and-mortar leaders with online channels, and even financial institutions looking to provide a financial marketplace or embedded finance experience to their customers
According to Samir Chaibi, Principal at Insignia Ventures Partners, Brankas is well-equipped and well-positioned to achieve this as the open finance movement accelerates in Southeast Asia. “The Open Finance industry is powering the next generation of fintech services and Brankas is at the forefront of this movement in Southeast Asia. We are thrilled to partner with a team with a world-class API-driven infrastructure built across key Southeast Asian markets to serve the largest fintech players as they scale. We have also been impressed by Brankas’s 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.”
Visa also participated in the round, marking the global payments network’s commitment to the fast developing Open Finance ecosystem in Southeast Asia. AFG Partners and Treasury International (backed by veteran fintech founders Jeff Cruttenden of Acorns and Eli Broverman of Betterment) have also joined the round along with existing Brankas investors Beenext and Integra Partners. Brankas was selected as one of the 5 participants in Visa’s 2021 Accelerator Program and jointly developed with Visa, a digital credit card issuance proposition using Visa’s data capabilities. The solution was showcased at the Visa Accelerator Demo Day in September 2021.