CrediLinq.Ai, a technology infrastructure company which enables ultra-fast B2B online financing and payments, announced today that it has raised a seed extension round from MS&AD Ventures, Big Sky Capital, and existing investors 1982 Ventures, and angels.
A pioneer in this space, CrediLinq.Ai has developed advanced API solutions, alternate credit scoring models and underwriting approaches to serve emerging markets, all of which allow it to empower B2B marketplaces to seamlessly offer Credit-as-a-Service on their platform. Serving this region has traditionally been difficult but CrediLinq’s team is able to build technology that offers unique insights by using alternative data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to help their customers grow and extend runway.
With a global team of 18 highly trained professionals, the company specializes in facilitating an end-to-end integrated embedded financing experience. The team plans to use the fresh capital to scale its operations and begin establishing its presence in the global embedded finance market. The firm is also eying strategic acquisitions across its key markets, including Indonesia and Singapore, and opportunistically signing on customers from other global regions.
The firm works with digital banks and funding partners to channel volume via its platform for underwriting and giving access to SMEs that need funding. They recently signed with two major stock exchange listed customers and are already enabling several other smaller e-commerce, payments and procurement platforms across Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia and Indonesia.
In 2021, embedded finance accounted for nearly 5% or USD 2.6 trillion of all financial transactions in the US alone, and this number is expected to surpass USD 7 trillion by 2026, according to the latest insights by Bain & Company. The global embedded finance market is currently worth USD 54.3 billion - however, at its current growth of 16.4% CAGR, the market is expected to be worth more than USD 248.8 billion by 2032, benchmarking this as a beneficial time for the embedded finance industry globally.
Deep Singh, Founder of CrediLinq.Ai, commented: “2023 will be an exciting year for embedded finance. As the technology matures and users become habituated to a unified and holistic finance experience in their native ecosystem, the benefits of this solution can be better realized. The fresh capital will help us scale our operations, upgrade our infrastructure and create a global business.”
Tiffine Wang, Partner at MS&AD Ventures: “At MS&AD Ventures, we invest in “A” teams that are building products that serve large markets that can scale globally. Deep and his team come with a wealth of experience drawing from several years of experience from tier 1 finance firms such as Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Moody’s Analytics, Standard Chartered Bank, Experian, and Credit Suisse. We are excited to work together with him to better serve businesses around the world to fuel their growth.”
Vikram Kotibhaskar, Co-Founder of CrediLinq.Ai added: “Most businesses starting today won’t ever need to interact with a traditional financial institution for its services, and can instead simply do so by logging in to their eCommerce partner profiles instead. This degree of native and unified experience, which allows the business owner to complete their entire purchase and financing journey on one platform is made possible by embedded finance. As the technology matures, we will witness many such new frontiers of innovation and convenience.”
Hans-Peter Ressel, Founder and CEO of Momentum Commerce stated: “We operate merchant stores across Lazada and Shopee for leading global brands. Working capital is at the heart of our growth and by using CrediLinq’s embedded GMV financing solution we were able to access capital quickly and seamlessly. Since using their service our sales have increased substantially and we have won new contracts from global brand names.”
Vikram further added: “Starting in Southeast Asia has made a lot of sense for us. Ecommerce growth stood at 20.6% in 2022 alone, being the highest in the world. When you look at the data, 6 of the fastest growing markets are at our doorstep. Serving these platforms via an embedded finance user experience further accelerates their growth.”