The ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (AFIN), announced the launch of ChekFIN today, a global financial technology registry, according to Monetary Authority of Singapore managing director Ravi Menon at the Singapore FinTech Festival.
The registry will go live on December 1 and is intended to help banks, community banks and other financial institutions identify and evaluate fintech companies for collaboration and development opportunities, according to AFIN.
ChekFIN will provide decentralized, open standard and trust-based solutions, with a goal of reducing the time FIs spend searching and assessing suitable partners. The platform is built using the latest generation of Web 3.0 services and will include comprehensive taxonomy and tagging systems in order to enable easy searches and relevant information in one place, according to Finextra.
“FIs have struggled with the time-consuming effort of finding and evaluating fintech firms before collaborating with them. Many of these issues … stem from the lack of a platform that consolidates all relevant information,” the non-profit organization stated in the release.
The platform will also utilize Verifiable Credentials (VCs), key digital certification that are machine-readable, tamper-evident, consent-driven and cryptographically secure in order to ensure holder information is secure. Once ChekFIN is released in early December, fintechs will share these Verifiable Credentials to give financial institutions full transparency into their systems, accolades and reviews.
“ChekFIN is a modern, one-stop platform specifically designed to reduce the friction between financial institutions and fintech companies during the search for potential partnerships. With our proprietary technology and deep understanding of the needs of the fintech industry, we hope that the platform would bring about greater connectivity in the fintech ecosystem, globally,” National Bank of Cambodia Assistant Governor H.E. Serey Chia told Finextra.
The platform will utilize BCG Fintech Control Tower’s assets in order to track 27,000 global fintech firms and provide insights into the ecosystem.
CheckFIN was built by global identity and data ecosystem firm Affinidi, with partnership support by BNY Mellon, Cantilan Bank, Credit Agricole, Emirates NBD, ING Group and more.
In other recent fintech news, Rapyd launched a new B2B offering for global cross-border payments. Socure also raised a $450 million Series E led by Accel and T. Rowe Price to reach a $4.5 billion valuation.