FrankieOne closes $20 million Series A

Identity and fraud prevention platform FrankieOne has closed a $20 million Series A funding round, with investors including famous DJs The Chainsmokers, founders of Robinhood and Monzo.

Led by Australian Venture Capitalists AirTree Ventures, as well as US based VC firm Greycroft, the Melbourne start-up claims it is one of the largest cap raises for an Australian regtech to date.

According to Simon Costello, CEO at FrankieOne, “We have been fortunate to attract such high-profile global investors, as they recognise the huge market potential for FrankieOne as more companies begin to embrace embedded finance, essentially becoming fintechs.”

Significant international growth has led FrankieOne to deliver an Annual Recurring Revenue up 20x year on year. The company has attracted 80 new clients including heavyweights Afterpay and Westpac in the last 18 months, all without a sales or marketing team – until now.

The company has doubled it headcount in the last three months, which saw the former McKinsey & Co associate partner Warren Oakes hired as COO.

According to John Henderson, Partner at AirTree Ventures, financial services companies are particularly challenged by Know your customer (KYC) and digital identity verification.

“The current, manual systems used by fintechs and FTSE100 companies alike are both bespoke and broken. The world needs a better solution, and we believe FrankieOne provides it. After seeing the incredible progress and undeniable traction Simon and the team have had, we're excited to be leading their Series A as they position themselves to be the leading identity verification and fraud risk provider," said Henderson.

According to Will Szczerbiak, Partner at Greycroft, inadequate systems for KYC, identity verification and anti-fraud can turn away potential customers.

“FrankieOne’s APIs extracts the complexity away, allowing their clients to onboard more great customers while delivering a delightful end user experience. It is a unique approach that scales globally, and we are excited about the partnership,” said Greycroft.

Costello says that customer experience has been a key focus for the company.

“With the threat of severe penalties if customer onboarding is not performed correctly, the primary focus for banks and fintechs has been on compliance, which usually comes at the detriment of the customer experience. What we have learned is that it does not need to be one or the other,” said Costello.

“Regulatory and technical challenges are often a major roadblock in a fintech’s ability to rapidly scale internationally. Our mission is to create a platform that provides fintechs with the convenience of consuming the world’s identity verification and fraud-prevention services via a single unified API. This allows fintechs to “switch on” geographies and services as they need, enabling them to focus on innovation and their core business.”