Verihubs, an Indonesia-based ID and data verification startup, has raised US$2.8 million in seed funding led by Insignia Venture Partners, says a TechCrunch report.
Central Capital Ventura (CCV), an investment arm of Bank Central Asia (BCA), and Singapore-based Amand Ventures also joined the round.
Angels who participated in this round include Shipper co-founder Budi Handoko, Payfazz co-founders Jefriyanto and Ricky Winata, BukuWarung founder Chinmay Chauhan, Modalku ex-CPO Pramodh Rai, and Singapore’s Gotrade co-founder Rohit Mulani.
Under the terms of the agreement, the funds from CCV will be used to expand Verihubs’s offerings for end-users who have an account with BCA.
The startup is also teaming up with Indonesia’s financial services platform Payfazz to help unbanked users deposit money with local agents for their online payments. BukuWarung, a bookkeeping app for SMEs, is also will help Verihubs access transaction data.
Verihubs will also use a portion of the capital to develop its product pipeline, including creating its own credit ratings based on transaction and account balance data.
Also read: Empowering fintech and e-commerce through digital identity verification
Launched in 2019 by Rick Firnando and Williem Williem, Verihubs assists Indonesian digital enterprises in authenticating their clients’ identities, verifying their histories, and gaining access to their financial data.
While Verihubs primarily serves clients in the banking and fintech sectors, its solution can also be applied to e-commerce, rental marketplaces and hospitality.
The firm uses AI-based identity authentication technologies and APIs to reduce verification time from a few weeks to as little as five seconds, allowing businesses to continue authenticating returning consumers via SMS, WhatsApp, or flash calls, and do KYC checks.
End users are required to take a selfie and then submit a photo of a government-issued photo ID when they first log into a Verihubs-enabled app. The AI technology will compare the two pictures and cross-referenced the ID with telecom credit ratings and Indonesian government databases, including criminal histories.
The company intends to expand into other Southeast Asia markets after achieving the product-market fit in Indonesia.
According to a 2020 report released by Fenergo, financial institutions globally suffered from more than US$10.6 billion in penalties for non-compliance with Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know your Customer (KYC), data privacy and MiFID regulations. In the Asia Pacific alone, fines for financial services firms totalled more than US$5.1 billion due to regulatory crackdowns on their illegitimate behaviours.
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Image Credit: Verihubs
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