Finantier raised a pre-seed funding led by East Ventures, bringing Open Finance to Indonesia and Southeast Asia

Finantier, Indonesia-based Open Finance startup, today announced a pre-seed funding round led by East Ventures with participation from AC Ventures, Genesia Ventures, and other investors.

Diego Rojas, Keng Low, and Edwin Kusuma founded Finantier earlier this year to provide the infrastructure and data products required by businesses to build the next generation of financial services. The startup enables digital platforms to securely work in collaboration with financial institutions to create seamless and personalized experiences for consumers, who can benefit from their data.

Rojas is a former CTO of multiple startups in Singapore and other countries. As a software engineer, he has more than a decade of experience building fintech products for companies in the USA (LendingClub), China (Dianrong), and Southeast Asia.

Low is a software engineer with experience working in Silicon Valley. He was also previously the Entrepreneur in Residence at East Ventures, where he worked closely with the firm’s partners and portfolio companies such as Warung Pintar and Fore Coffee in technical development and product management

Edwin is ex Google. Previously, he was sitting in C-level for several fintech companies in the P2P lending space in Indonesia. He is also a certified member of the Indonesian Joint Funding Fintech Association (AFPI).

“Open Finance is a framework built on top of Open Banking principles where consumers can securely access and use data they generate across multiple platforms to make the most of it” said Diego Rojas, CEO of Finantier.

Finantier offers an API and infrastructure that powers other fintech products, accelerating time to market and reducing costs for businesses while delivering tailored solutions for consumers so everyone can fully benefit from its Open Finance ecosystem.

“We leverage on the digital footprint of consumers and businesses to enable them to securely access tailored financial services that improves their financial wellbeing,” adds Keng Low, CPO of Finantier.

Financial inclusion

Currently operated in Singapore and Indonesia, Finantier plans to use the new funds to expand its team within the next few months and supercharge their proprietary technology. The company eyes an expansion into other emerging markets as its platform grows, with specific solutions adapted to each country.

Willson Cuaca, Co-founder and Managing Partner of East Ventures notes that Finantier helps to address the needs of roughly 139 million adults in Indonesia who are underbanked or unbanked.

According to East Ventures Digital Competitiveness Index 2020, which maps digital economic development across Indonesia, financial inclusion is where the largest divide was found. There is a huge gap in access to financial services, fintech loans, and digital transactions between regions in Java, the most populous island, with the other islands in the archipelago.

“Providing equal access to financial services will create multiplier effects to the Indonesian economy. Currently, hundreds of companies work with their own unique solutions to bring financial services to more people. We believe Finantier will help them to offer more products and services to this underserved section of the population,” said Cuaca.

Bank Indonesia encourages financial institutions to collaborate with fintech companies to bring more MSME into Indonesia digital economy. According to the central bank, only 13% or around 8 million of 65 million MSME in Indonesia use digital products and services in their day to day business.

By the mid 2020, there are more than 450 licensed fintech companies in Indonesia with around 40% of them being P2P lending firms.

“Fintech lenders are frequently unable to extend loans to consumers and businesses. This is due to incomplete information, or the inability of fintechs to obtain the full financial picture of a borrower to de-risk their operations and reduce costs,” said Edwin Kusuma, COO of Finantier, who formerly used to run P2P lending firms.