Ayoconnect Pockets Series B Funding Worth 215 Billion Rupiah

After pocketing $10 million in pre-series B funding at the end of 2021, Ayoconnect has again announced funding for their series B round.

This time, the investment value obtained was $15 million (equivalent to IDR215 billion). This latest round was led by Tiger Global, a venture capital firm that has also invested in JD, Microsoft and Amazon.

This funding round also saw participation from global payment gateway company PayU and investment management firm Alto Partners, as well as individual investors Jerry Ng (President Commissioner of Bank Jago) and William Hockey (co-founder of fintech company Plaid).

Furthermore, Ayoconnect will use the fresh funds from this funding round to develop innovations and launch new products, including the Direct Debit API.

Ayoconnect’s Direct Debit API enables retail companies to provide payment features through automatic debit from buyer accounts from six well-known banks in Indonesia.

This feature is believed to increase the convenience of buyers, because buyers no longer need to make manual transfers or enter debit or credit card information when transacting. Currently, Ayoconnect is undergoing a discussion process to embrace more financial institutions into its ecosystem.

Ayoconnect Co-Founder & CEO Jakob Rost said, his company’s experience in building financial infrastructure in Indonesia for six years has made it a solid and most needed open finance platform in Indonesia.

“Ayoconnect wants to build the most complete ecosystem that can support business growth of companies of all sizes, from long-established companies to aspiring tech unicorns in the future. We are proud of the trust that the world’s largest investors have placed in us to realize our vision.”

Business Growth

As an open finance platform, Ayoconnect currently has 500 million API hits annually. The API solutions that Ayoconnect has built have been used by more than 200 companies, including leading financial institutions and technology companies in Indonesia.

Official partnerships with major Indonesian banks also allow Ayoconnect to provide alternative data services that include financial information for customers—both those who already have access to banking services (banked) and those who haven’t (unbanked).

This is done to help companies make more informed decisions and provide personalized financial services to their customers.

Ayoconnect was founded in 2016 by Jacob with his two colleagues Chiragh Kirpalani (Co-Founder and COO) and Adi Vora (Co-Founder and CTO) with a focus on building API-based solutions for bill payments and other digital products.

Now the company provides API services for various needs, which they refer to as Full Stack APIs (including: Financial APIs, Bill APIs, Open Finance APIs, and Insights APIs).

Open Finance Platform in Indonesia

The potential that can be generated by the open finance platform is indeed very large amid the growth of the fintech business message in Indonesia. Simply put, the open finance platform allows various digital application developers to provide fintech capabilities in their services (embedded).

Ayoconnect has built a new rail for Indonesian finance as well as a one stop shop API for economic actors in it. The talent of the team, relationships with the banking and technology sectors, and phenomenal growth are important indicators that Ayoconnect has what it takes to execute at the highest level.

Apart from Ayoconnect, currently there are several other players who also present open finance solutions, namely Brick, Safe, Finantier, and others.

Brankas also announced the acquisition of series B funding worth 287 billion Rupiah led by Insignia Ventures earlier this year. Meanwhile, Finantier has received support from Y Combinator, East Ventures, and a number of other investors.

On the regulatory side, the open finance ecosystem is also supported by the Open API standardization which was inaugurated last year by Bank Indonesia. This is an important milestone, considering that the platform developers are peddling their solutions via API connection to their customers.