Brankas, an open banking startup for Southeast Asian markets, is entering the new year with a $20 million Series B. The funding was led by Insignia Ventures Partners, with participation from returning investors Beenext and Integra Partners. Other backers included, AFG Partners and Treasury International, the venture capital firm led by fintech veterans including Jeff Cruttenden, co-founder of Acorns and Eli Broverman, co-founder of Betterment, also invested. Brankas’ platform offers a roster of 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. Founded in 2016, Brankas goal is to “democratize access to financial and identity data.” Clients include traditional financial institutions, banks and fintech startups.
Brankas says it is seeing 30% month-on-month growth in API usage and is now used by more than 40 banks and 100 enterprise customers and channel partners. Since many of its fintech clients focus on “unbanked” people, or people who don’t have traditional bank accounts or credit cards, Brankas’ partners include financial providers like remittance companies and e-wallet. In terms of data, Brankas developed four new APIS — 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’ telecom data. Brankas new funding will be used to build new APIs and double its current team of 100. It also plans to add more capabilities to its payments, data and banking-as-a-service API product menu in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. It will also announce partnerships with digital banks and fintech companies in Vietnam and Bangladesh, two new markets where Brankas will go live early this year. Brankas also plans to deepen the capabilities of its payments, data and banking-as-a-service API product menu in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. They will also announce partnerships with digital banks and fintech leaders in Vietnam soon and Bangladesh, going live early this year.