Founded: 2014

Products: Secure Financing solution; Corporate Issuance solution; Digital Workflows solution

Overview: MonetaGo is a financial technology solutions provider concentrating on the fight against fraud and inefficient, paper-based financial workflows. Its three key areas of operation are trade finance, corporate issuance, and digital workflows.

The firm’s flagship platform – Secure Financing network – is focused on preventing fraud in trade finance. The platform is currently used by banks and several multinational institutions. MonetaGo claims agreements, contracts and commercial working relationships with the likes of SWIFT, Reserve Bank of India, HSBC, Citi, Wipro and many multinational financial institutions.

On the corporate issuance side, with businesses issuing a variety of financial instruments to obtain funding for short-term debt obligations, the predominantly manual and paper-based process is highly inefficient, with data often trapped in silos across multiple intermediaries. By digitising the process, end-to-end, MonetaGo’s Corporate Issuances platform aims to reduce time to market for corporates.

In terms of technology, the fintech deploys a mixture of proprietary technology as well as R3’s Corda blockchain platform. MonetaGo’s solutions were built with heavily regulated industries in mind. The company describes its platforms as ‘turnkey solutions’ that enable businesses to align with worldwide political and regulatory mandates.

MonetaGo’s platforms have been live since March 2018, and the firm achieved a technological milestone by deploying the first enterprise blockchain network used in day-to-day operations by the financial services industry. MonetaGo has enabled over 1 million live, production transactions to date using its Secure Financing platform.

In 2020, MonetaGo was identified as one of CBInsights’ ‘Blockchain 50’ most promising companies applying blockchain technology.

In September 2022, Standard Chartered announced completion of an industry-first pilot of its Trade Financing Validation Service, powered by MonetaGo’s Secure Financing system. Accessible via SWIFT’s global API, the bank solution provides checks on financing transactions to prevent duplicate financing frauds within domestic markets and cross-border. The pilot, which took place during Q2 2022, saw Standard Chartered test the solution using mock data with invoices, bills of lading, purchase orders and warehouse receipts, returning results in near real time.

Clients: Works with a number of clients including government bodies, banks, alternative finance providers, regulators, multinationals and financial institutions.

Active region(s): Has a presence in Singapore, Thailand, Japan, USA, Mexico, Australia, and India.

Partners: Several, including R3, and the Singapore -based group of trade lifecycle experts and platform provider, GUUD.

Employees: 34

Funding: Over $12m. 

Ownership: Investors and Employees. 

Elevator pitch: “MonetaGo is pioneering a new era in information sharing and efficiency across financial institutions and large corporates. The team is led by Jesse Chenard, a technology entrepreneur and investor with a number of exits including Tremor and Image Space Media. While many firms are still exploring blockchain’s potential in test environments, MonetaGo is one of the few to have live systems with large scale production transaction volumes. To date, MonetaGo has processed over one million transactions on its flagship Secure Financing platform.”

Website: https://www.monetago.com/

Email: [email protected]

TMI view: With inefficient paper-based and manual processes vulnerable to fraud, yet still commonplace, trustworthy fraud control systems are now an essential part of trade. With its digitalisation and blockchain solutions already up and running with some substantial businesses, MonetaGo is ahead of the curve, providing efficiency and irrefutable documentation for banks and corporate users.

Verdict: MonetaGo is gathering users cross Asia and has the tools and the support to make a much-needed difference in the wider trade space.