Fiscal API supplier Brick is making the infrastructure for open up banking in Southeast Asia
The adoption of financial apps is surging in Southeast Asian markets like Indonesia, the region’s most populous place. Started by fintech veterans past 12 months, Brick develops APIs that make it less complicated for tech businesses to incorporate id verification and accessibility financial details from their customers. It is presently partnered with Indonesia’s 7 greatest banking institutions, covering extra than 90% of the country’s financial institution accounts, and designs to expand into all Southeast Asia nations around the world.
Additional than 3-fourths of Southeast Asia’s inhabitants is unbanked or underbanked, which means that never have a financial institution account or obtain to traditional lending products and services. Brick will serve them as perfectly, with products and solutions like mobile wallet and telcos APIs that are currently in beta and slated for launch next quarter.
The startup, which is now utilized by 250 builders and 35 tech firms, declared nowadays it has raised new seed round. The volume of funding was undisclosed. Investors incorporate financial commitment companies Superior Tomorrow Ventures, PT Prasetia Dwidharma, 1982 Ventures, Antler and Rally Cap Ventures, and angel backers like TrueLayer main running officer Shefali Roy, Cred main govt officer Kunal Shah, Modalku CEO Reynold Wijaya, Carousell CEO Quek Siu Rui, and the founders of Nium, Xfers, Aspire, BukuWarung, ZenRooms and CareemPay.
Brick was started in 2020 by chief executive officer Gavin Tan, an early personnel at Aspire, a neobank for little- to mid-sized organizations, and main technological innovation Deepak Malhotra, earlier co-founder of Indian neobank Slice and a previous PayPal engineer.
Brick’s APIs have been deployed by own economic management, cloud accounting, lending, wealth administration and neobank apps, and Tan told TechCrunch it also sees use instances in verticals like savings, stock buying and selling and monetary arranging.
Tan mentioned he began imagining of launching Brick when operating at high-development fintech startups in Southeast Asia, including Aspire, and encountering a deficiency of infrastructure that slowed solution growth.
“Without unified APIs like those furnished by Brick, fintech developers have to shell out months figuring out commercials, navigating differing tech requirements and navigating differing information specifications, just before they are capable to start their app,” Tan explained.
A diagram displaying Brick’s monetary API offerings
Brick and other fintechs have benefited from solid guidance from Indonesian regulators. For example, Financial institution Indonesia printed open banking API expectations in 2020.
Tan explained the benchmarks “represents concrete federal government recognition of open banking principles, together with buyer possession of info and the requirement of their consent to transfer and use that facts (which Tan describes as “a core theory that all our products and solutions adhere to”) and setting up a typical language for banking companies and fintechs that allows the adoption of embedded finance. It also laid out implementation timelines for open APIs, commencing with payment initiation APIs in 2021, which Brick will start later this year.
Brick works closely with Financial institution Indonesia and Indonesia’s Fiscal Products and services Authority and is participating in Lender Rakyat Indonesia’s Sembrani Wira accelerator plan.
The most apparent comparison for Brick is to Plaid, the economic API service provider that served empower the adoption of open up banking and open finance in the United States, Canada and European nations around the world. A essential distinction, nonetheless, is that Plaid serves marketplaces the place the the greater part of people today have a financial institution account.
On the other hand, “in Southeast Asia, only 25% of grown ups often use a bank account,” Tan explained. “For the 75% unbanked and underbanked grown ups, their facts resides in alternate economical info resources.” To tap into that market place, Brick is developing APIs for different fiscal knowledge sources, like mobile wallets, telcos, utility providers, e-commerce platforms, social safety and tax workplaces.
The corporation is at the moment centered on item launches in Indonesia, and programs to commence growing into other high-progress fintech markets, like Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam, later this year.