Singapore Tech Startup ADVANCE.AI Snags $200M in Funding Round

ADVANCE.AI is expected to raise roughly $200 million in a funding round that will put the Singapore-based tech startup in exclusive company as a southeastern Asia unicorn, according to a Reuters report.

The company uses artificial intelligence-based technology to offer digital identity verification, fraud detection and credit-scoring services. Private equity firm Warburg Pincus is the lead investor in the latest funding round for ADVANCE.AI, Reuters reported.

ADVANCE.AI’s valuation is expected to more than double from its Series C fundraising round of two years ago that raised $80 million from Chinese venture capital firm Gaorong Capital and Pavilion Capital among other investors, according to one of the anonymous sources who spoke to Reuters.

The company also raised almost $55 million in a previous fundraising round.

Chinese investment firm GSR Ventures and a subsidiary of Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings are among ADVANCE.AI’s other investors. ADVANCE.AI works with more than 1,000 customers in banking, eCommerce, FinTech and retail, among other sectors.

ADVANCE.AI plans to expand its footprint beyond southeast Asia and India into Mexico and other countries.

Related: ModCloth’s Data-Driven Approach to Tackling Fraud, Reducing False Positives

Fraud prevention is expected to be a $40.8 billion market by 2026, but not all security systems are built the same — and in some cases, they can cause more problems than they solve.

Up to 15% of card-not-present (CNP) transactions are falsely flagged as fraudulent, costing merchants up to 75 times more than the fraud itself, because customers abandon purchases out of frustration and merchants lose future sales opportunities with those consumers.

A recent study found that businesses lose an average of 3 percent of their annual revenue each year to false payment card declines, which translates to $386 billion annually by 2023. Many of these false positives are the result of overzealous systems mistaking unusual purchases for fraudulent ones.

Experts predict the multifactor authentication global market size will hit $32 billion by 2026, thanks to recent incidents of security breaches, fraud and identity theft.