Founded in 2016, with a team of about 250 people, Ayoconnect is currently working toward more financial inclusion for Indonesian consumers and SMEs. It works with regulators and incumbent banks and was recently awarded a Bank of Indonesia (BI) Payment Service Provider Category 1 license. Ayoconnect says it is the only open finance player in Indonesia to be licensed by the central bank.
Ayoconnect’s APIs make it faster for businesses to launch new financial services, instead of needing to build their own tech infrastructure. It is also licensed by Indonesia’s central bank, enabling it to offer more services. The open finance startup announced today it has closed a $13 million Series B extension round led by SIG Venture Capital, with participation from CE Innovation Capital and returning investor PayU, the payments and fintech business of Prosus.
Ayoconnect’s new funding will be used for leadership hiring, and on its Ayoconnect’s product and technology, including new solutions for payments, data and banking and new APIs for account opening and card issuing.
Ayoconnect raised again so soon after the initial close of its Series B because it was growing rapidly and secured important strategic partnerships after receiving its BI license. Rost said the new capital will strengthen Ayoconnect’s balance sheet and prepare it for future growth over the next few years.
The platform now serves 200 API customers, including large banks, financial institutions, tech unicorns and fintechs, and offers more than 4,000 embedded finance products. Its APIs cover two categories: open banking APIs and payment services APIs, with the goal of building the most complete open finance stack in Southeast Asia.
Other Southeast Asian startups in the open finance space include Brick, Finverse, Brankas and Finantier. One way that Ayoconnect differentiate is by being the only licensed open finance platform in Indonesia, which enables it to offer solutions that aren’t available on the market yet.