SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s FinTech investment and ventures arm, has invested funds into Hong Kong-based firm Chekk.
According to Standard Chartered, the investment has the aim of speeding up Chekk’s product development and boosting its sales organisation, both to meet the increasing demand of the global identity verification market for individuals and corporates that is anticipated to be worth $17bn by 2026.
SC Ventures joins Chekk’s multi-million dollar financing round announced in June this year, led by HSBC and with participation of venture capital firm SOSV.
SC Ventures head Alex Manson said, “Chekk is already an established partner for SC Ventures, as our go-to KYC/KYB provider for a number of ventures we have incubated. While several companies claim to optimize customer on-boarding in banking, none comes close to Chekk, with real-time data collection delivering a digital advantage across multiple stakeholders. We are thrilled to partner with this great team, including with our most recent investment, to be addressing a real gap in our industry.”
Chekk CEO and co-founder Pascal Nizri added, “Chekk has a unique proposition, taking KYB and KYC to another level of capabilities and customer experience, which resonates very well with various parts of Standard Chartered Bank and its partners. It is rapidly becoming a standard across multiple business units and is also being adopted by various other financial institutions and FinTechs around the world.
“Our platform aggregates data sources from around the world (e.g. ‘live’ government corporate registries, global commercial data partners, anti-money laundering lists, ESG data) to feed into a modular ecosystem of advanced capabilities and channels, enabling organizations like financial services providers to manage relationships with business and individual clients. Beyond already being our client, we are delighted to welcome Standard Chartered as investors, to support the expansion of our product suite, teams and client base globally.”
Standard Chartered Bank is the latest financial institution to join the Metaverse, buying a plot of land on The Sandbox.
Standard Chartered is the first bank to buy land on this The Sandbox, a virtual world. Other residents of the Metaverse include Warner Music Group, Adidas and Atari.
Copyright © 2022 FinTech Global
