SC Ventures, the fintech investment and venture arm of Standard Chartered, announced that it participated in the latest funding round of Hong Kong-based KYC and data management platform Chekk.
The funding round, which raised an undisclosed amount, was led by HSBC and also participated by US-based venture capital firm SOSV, which is known for its startup development programmes such as Chinaccelerator and China-based HAX.
Chekk is a SaaS platform co-founded and led by Pascal Nizri and Benjamin Petit. It seeks to remove pain and costs from interactions between companies and their individual and business customers, while enabling financial crime prevention, access to financial services, and new business relationships.
“Our platform aggregates data sources from around the world to feed into a modular ecosystem of advanced capabilities and channels, enabling organisations like financial services providers to manage relationships with business and individual clients,” added Nizri.
Chekk is already an established partner for SC Ventures as its KYC/KYB provider for a number of ventures it incubated, said SC Ventures head Alex Manson.
The investment in Chekk comes as the global identity verification market for individuals and corporates was valued at $8 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $17 billion by 2026, registering a CAGR of 13.29%, according to a report cited by SC Ventures.
SC Ventures recently participated in a $40 million Series B funding round of Singapore-based AI startup Silent Eight. Its earlier investments in Asia include Singapore-based fintech startup SoCash, Indonesia’s e-commerce firm Bukalapak, fintech company KreditPintar and LINE Bank, as well as Korean fintech unicorn Toss.