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Indonesian lending tech firm Finfra rraises $1 million

Finfra, the one-stop shop for companies launching white-labeled lending products in Indonesia, has announced it raised $1 million in funding.

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The funding round was a collaborative effort by DSX Ventures and Seedstars International Ventures, regional fintech experts Cento Ventures and Fintech Nation, Baltic-based startup support incubators FirstPick and BADideas Fund, and Silicon Valley-based Hustle Fund. Finfra plans to accelerate product development and grow its engineering, data, and finance teams in an effort to boost revenue and further establish itself as a market leader within the Southeast Asian embedded lending industry.

Indonesia underwent a transformative period of digitisation in the late 2010s and early 2020s, fueled by an influx of VC investment in ecommerce, logistics, and financial services. As a result, Indonesia’s internet economy has grown tenfold since 2015, reaching US$ 77 billion in annual gross merchandise value (GMV).1 This trend was accelerated by the pandemic, creating a mass influx of new digital platforms that enable Indonesian entrepreneurs to launch asset-light business models. Access to credit, however, remains low for businesses and individuals - so much so that only 3% of the population has a credit card. Offering credit and other financial services to existing customer bases can help boost user adoption, increase per-customer spend, deepen customer loyalty, and improve retention.

Finfra enables underbanked businesses and non-financial digital platforms to embed financial products and services, particularly credit lending, into their own distribution channels. Its top-to-bottom approach ensures total regulatory compliance while providing a complete loan management system, scoring, portfolio analytics, and access to debt capital. In areas where conventional banks refuse to go, Finfra provides sophisticated and business-friendly fintech solutions that drive financial inclusion. This is also essential work in light of recent initiatives by the Indonesian Financial Services Authority (OJK) to reach financial inclusion targets of 90% by 2024 (compared to 75% in 2019) and improve access to sustainable and transparent financial services.2

Markus Prommik, co-founder and CEO at Finfra, said: “As entrepreneurs ourselves, we understand how challenging it is to build, grow, and maintain a business on its own terms. Expanding to offer lending as a service is a highly attractive prospect to many companies but a huge undertaking in its own right. Rather than do it themselves, companies can use our APIs to solve the crucial unit economics of lending. There’s real demand for comprehensive credit-centric services and lending among Indonesian small businesses, particularly as it relates to providing lending as a service. We’re determined to make it not only feasible but genuinely easy for Southeast Asian companies to do so.”

Patricia Sosrodjojo, General Partner at Seedstars International Ventures, said: “The multi-billion dollar Indonesian market is actively transitioning from the lending strategies of the first phase of digital finance to a more sophisticated and complex iteration built on existing digital economy infrastructure and ecosystems. We’re excited to back Finfra’s experienced team and support their mission to advance access to finance in a scalable way. We’ve seen similar initiatives succeed in emerging markets where MSMEs face significant hurdles to accessing capital. Finfra’s approach not only aligns with national economic development goals but is well-positioned to take on the challenges of this rapidly growing market.”

Dmitry Levit, Partner at Cento Ventures: “With their experience navigating Indonesia's intricate financial services ecosystem, the Finfra team stands as seasoned industry veterans. We firmly believe that the best tools are crafted by masters of the craft and already see the company emerging as the toolmakers of choice for digital businesses that rely on credit embedding. By strengthening the foundation of the country’s digital financial infrastructure, Finfra will contribute to a stronger, healthier, and more thoughtfully inclusive financial services ecosystem in Indonesia and across Southeast Asia, benefiting businesses and consumers alike”

Reinis Simanovskis, co-founder and CTO at Finfra, emphasized that “numerous platforms fail to acknowledge the untapped demand their sellers have for capital and the inherent difficulties in building these financial products in-house. Finfra is dedicated to resolving intricate infrastructure problems to enable platforms to optimize their support for sellers.”

The team’s initial venture, Danabijak, now operates as a subsidiary of Finfra and remains profitable. Meanwhile Finfra’s roster of live partners has tripled in the last six months alone. Kickstarted with early support from Plug & Play Indonesia, Chocolate Ventures, and other angel investors with industry expertise, Finfra’s explosive growth continues unabated.

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