Tiger Global invests $15m in Indonesian FinTech Ayoconnect

By Leandra Monteiro

Ayoconnect, Southeast Asia’s largest open finance platform, has closed a $15 million series B financing round led by Tiger Global. The round was joined by PayU, the payments and FinTech business of Prosus, and Alto Partners, as well as individual strategic investors, including Plaid co-founder William Hockey and Jerry Ng, President Commissioner of Bank Jago. Ayoconnect will use the funds to satisfy increasing customer demand for more products and use cases. Ayoconnect is already the largest open finance platform in Indonesia, with more than 200 API customers and 4,000 embedded finance products.

“After six years of building new rails for Indonesian finance, today Ayoconnect is the most robust and in-demand open finance platform in the country. We are building the AWS of open finance with the most complete offering globally so that we can power the companies of today and the tech unicorns of tomorrow. We are proud to receive the backing of some of the world’s most renowned investors,” said Jakob Rost, CEO and co-founder at Ayoconnect.

Ayoconnect’s stack is divided into two main areas. On the embedded finance side, Ayoconnect helps companies of any size launch financial products using APIs such as phone top-up, utilities payments, embedded insurance, and auto-billing. Banking-as-a-service APIs provide account opening, disbursement, credit, investment, savings, and other capabilities. On the data side, Ayoconnect enables companies to make better decisions by pulling banking data, such as account validation, account balance, transactions, and liabilities. Ayoconnect also provides data on unbanked and underbanked people through bill payments, e-wallet, location, phone, ecommerce, payroll and other alternative data. New use-case APIs are added regularly.

The company will use the new funds to continue launching new products and increase its capacity so it can absorb accelerating demand. In the first half of 2022, Ayoconnect will launch Indonesia’s first-ever direct debit service. This API will transform financial services for Indonesian consumers and their suppliers by automating recurring payments directly from customers’ bank accounts. Plans are underway to offer clients cards-as-a-service, and Ayoconnect is set to begin its regional expansion.

“At PayU, we have always believed in partnering with promising entrepreneurs who share our vision of a world without financial borders. Ayoconnect has built new rails for Indonesian finance as well as a one stop shop API for economic actors within it. The talent within the team, relations with the banking and technology sectors and phenomenal growth were all important indicators for us that Ayoconnect has what it takes to execute at the highest level. We are delighted to join in Ayoconnect’s journey as it evolves its offerings to serve more businesses, helps the next generation of startups to grow, and brings a higher degree of inclusion to the entire region,” said Fady Abdel Nour, Global Head of M&A and investments, at PayU.