There is a critical need for financial institutions to streamline their (Know Your Customer) KYC processes in order for their business to thrive, improve user experience, and meet regulatory demands. Yet, there is still friction with different financial institutions and partners requiring different documents and information. The KYC process is fragmented. Companies that want to onboard users globally, end up integrating with over 10 vendors to verify the identity of the user. Creating a seamless onboarding experience for the legitimate users while also keeping fraudsters away continues to be a tricky balance. Additionally, figuring out the right vendors, and drafting contracts with them individually is a time consuming and resource intensive process.

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Today, we’re thrilled to announce our $2M seed round to accelerate our journey towards building a simple global KYC platform.

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We’ve teamed up with world class venture capital firms and a roster of industry experts to put KYC, Know Your Business (KYB), Risk, & Fraud all under one roof. We want to take away the complexities of providers and build a future where they all fall in one seamless transaction. Our $2M round was led by Y Combinator and Okta Ventures, with participation from Restive Ventures, Liquid2 Ventures, TwentyTwo Ventures, Wedbush Ventures, as well as strategic angel investors and operators Immad Akhund (CEO Mercury), Seth Weinstein (ex-Morgan Stanley), Vijay Krishnan (CTO Turing), Mit Shah (COO MethodFi), Samvit Ramadurgam, and others.

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The Why?

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We live in the fortunate era where international borders no longer limit us from interacting with one another. For better or for worse, while the physical borders shut down during the pandemic, new doors opened online. People found solace by connecting with one another through video calls and chat rooms. People from across the globe connected with one another, the world grew a little closer.

As physical presence stopped being as relevant, the need to provide services globally exponentially increased. Being Default Global is no longer a nice to have, but an essential offering. Businesses that are default global are witnessing the most meteoric growth; prime examples include international payments & crypto companies. But onboarding users globally is a job easier said than done.

How do you ensure you comply with the policies of each geography? How do you ensure the users are who they claim to be? How do you combat the fraud that comes with it?

We have witnessed the struggles that come with continuously evolving fraudsters as well as regulatory requirements first-hand in our previous roles at Google (Chaitanya) & Meta (Rushabh). The current industry standard to manage fraud while onboarding users is fragmented by geography and often leads to user churn.

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The What?

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Our goal is to build a global KYC platform that enables companies to seamlessly and securely onboard anyone, anywhere.

Already live in 56 countries around the world, AiPrise allows its customers to onboard users with local KYC methods, in accordance with the compliance & data residency requirements of each country. Our no-code solution cuts down time to launch in each new geography from months to just 4-5 days.

Fraud is always evolving and so are compliance regulations. We believe that no one company can fight fraud and solve KYC globally, which is why AiPrise has partnered with local providers that have spent years perfecting their technologies in their geographies.

We want our customers to be able to leverage the best and build a identity stack that works for them. If you are looking to learn more about our platform, reach out to us at info@aiprise.com.

Industry leaders like Immad, CEO of Mercury, have faced this issue first hand and they quickly saw the value that AiPrise brings for the global companies of the world.

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The What’s Next?

There are 3 key areas we want to focus on:

Increased coverage

We have a lot more to do, a lot more parts of the world to cover. Increasing our global presence will be our number one priority. If you are an identity data vendor with access to unique data points from your region, please reach out to us at info@aiprise.com.

Scale ourselves

A great product starts with a great team. As co-founders, we've had experience building and leading the trust and safety team at companies like Google and have experience building high-touch products at Meta. Our aim is to enable companies to expand globally and move fast. To achieve that, we need to move fast ourselves & also have a rigorous focus on the developer experience of our platform. If this space excites you, please reach out to us at careers@aiprise.com.

Build a community

We believe fraud is best solved together. A fraudster is highly likely to hit multiple platforms at once, using the same technique. The need of the hour is to share insights with one another and establish a mutual dialogue. Follow our LinkedIn page and stay tuned to our community updates. Let’s talk, we are in this together. :)

Finally, we are deeply grateful to our family, friends and investors for believing in us and empowering us to build AiPrise.

Onwards and upwards.

Best,
Chaitanya Sarda & Rushabh Shah