Singapore’s Credify Raises $1M To Expand Into Southeast Asia

Software development company Credify, based in Singapore, has raised $1 million in a seed funding round from SoftBank-backed artificial intelligence (AI) incubator Deepcore, as well as Beenext, according to a report.

Credify, which was founded in 2019, said it plans to use the money to expand further into Southeast Asia, to continue with product development and to push forward with live client engagements.

The company provides customers with trust system and identity solutions to aid in the areas of eCommerce and lending, particularly in terms of credibility.

According to the report, Credify acts as a “personal data bridge” to help connect consumer services like lending and online shopping with firms that handle credit scoring and digital authentication. The company said it works to generate new sources of revenue for organizations while ensuring privacy protection and blockchain-based security.

South Asia is the fastest-growing market in FinTech and eCommerce, according to Credify. The area is projected to be a $72 billion market for FinTech in 2020, at an CAGR of 72.5 percent, and is expected to be a $102 billion eCommerce market by 2025.

The region also experiences some of the highest fraud rates, in both finance and eCommerce. An average of 1.6 percent of web-sourced revenue in the region is lost to fraud, according to CyberSource.

SoftBank announced Deepcore earlier last year, Bloomberg reported at the time. The company has the goal of finding and nurturing new technology companies.

The effort is separate from SoftBank’s other venture, Vision Fund, which is worth $100 billion and has invested in co-working and ride-hailing companies.

The main unifier of Deepcore investments is that they are involved with artificial intelligence. In May of last year, the fund named AI expert Yutaka Matsuo to its board.

“I wish an enterprise … like a GAFA will start its life in Japan,” he said, invoking the acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. “The number of startups here is fewer than [in] the U.S. and Europe, and we need to increase it by providing such [an] environment that engineers can open up a business.”