Identity verification and fraud detection API platform FrankieOne completes A$45 million Series A funding
This article comes fromTechcrunch, Original Author: Catherine Shu
Odaily Translator |
Odaily Translator |
Identity verification and fraud detection API platform FrankieOne has raised A$23 million (about US$15.4 million) in an additional Series A+ investment, bringing its total Series A funding to A$45 million (about US$30 million). According to FrankieOne, this is the largest venture capital investment in Australia's regulatory technology (RegTech) industry to date.
The latest round was co-led by AirTree Ventures and Greycroft, with participation from Reinventure, the venture arm of financial services firm Westpac, Tidal Ventures, Apex Capital Partners and others. New strategic investors include Binance Labs and Kraken Ventures.
Founded in 2019 by fintech serial entrepreneurs Simon Costello and Aaron Chipper, FrankieOne connects banks, fintech, cryptocurrency and gaming companies to hundreds of data sources and works with 170 financial institutions globally. FrankieOne says its revenue has quadrupled in the past 12 months and its current clients include Westpac, Shopify, Afterpay, Binance, Zipmex and PointsBet. In the past year, its team has doubled in size and opened a new office in San Francisco.
Costello said FrankieOne grew out of Frankie, a neobank venture he co-founded with Chipper. Costello and Chipper wanted Frankie to differentiate itself from the industry with the best onboarding experience by using the top identity and fraud prevention tools available, but “this process proved to be overly complex, requiring multiple integrations, and it was clear we needed Create your own risk-based onboarding process,” said Costello, realizing that other fintechs were suffering from the same problem.
Therefore, FrankieOne was created to simplify regulatory and compliance related processes. It now offers an API that connects third-party providers with more than 350 data sources in 48 countries.
Costello explained that most fintechs, banks, and crypto firms suffer from insufficient match ratios, coverage, or ability to scale as they connect to a single provider for their identity needs. This means they also need to constantly maintain the technology stack.
FrankieOne solves this by connecting hundreds of data sources from multiple vendor partners, meaning its clients no longer need to rely on a single vendor. Affiliated providers of its API include established financial services companies such as Equifax, Experian, and Socure, as well as fast-growing startups such as Sardine AI.
“What sets FrankieOne apart is that it allows clients to switch suppliers, create dynamic workflows, add more early warning signs of fraud, and add new markets, ensuring our clients can quickly respond to changing regulations and the latest business requirements without any additional workload.”
He added that FrankieOne's clients are typically large and mid-sized organizations in highly regulated industries that need to adapt to complex policies that change frequently.
When it comes to how customers use FrankieOne, Costello cites the example of sports betting app PointsBet, which previously used a single provider for its customer onboarding process, but had to deal with a large number of potential users that could not be verified in real time. This results in the loss of new customers, or the need for further manual verification of their details. PointsBet has increased lead completion rates by 14% since partnering with FrankieOne.
When Westpac started to digitize more of their financial services, they still used separate legacy systems and needed to improve their pass rates to reduce churn. They are integrating FrankieOne's platform in their new Banking as a Service (BaaS) for KYC functionality. This improved the pass rate so much that Westpac decided to add FrankieOne services to their entire business.
