Wink Biometric Payments and Identity Platform Announces Pre-seed Funding

Wink is on a mission to eliminate identity theft and payments fraud on the internet while enhancing user convenience and speed for e-commerce transactions. Wink announced the successful close of a pre-seed funding round of $2.85 million, highly oversubscribed against its goal of $1 million. Wink’s biometric payments and identity platform uses advanced face, voice and device recognition combined with AI and Machine learning, to truly eliminate passwords and card numbers from e-commerce. The venture was launched by serial entrepreneur Deepak Jain, who has previously built transformational businesses and products in the NFC payments, neobanking, blockchain and cross border payment spaces.

Cerracap, a leading early-stage venture fund, and Carneros Bay, an advisory and incubation firm, led the pre-seed round. The round also included participation from Tntra Ventures, several current and past executives of large technology companies, industry leaders and entrepreneurs who have deep expertise and track record of very successful ventures in the payments, e-commerce, cybersecurity, identity verification, blockchain and semiconductor industries.

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“There is an opportunity to simplify payments and authentication, starting with e-commerce, but eventually the entire Web3 movement at large,” said Deepak Jain, Wink’s CEO and Founder. “At Wink, our mission is to empower transactions that don’t rely on passwords, credit card numbers or expensive device-based authentication techniques, making the internet a safer place for both merchants and consumers.”

Wink is the industry’s first multi-factor authentication and tokenization platform that uses video from a consumer’s device to securely tokenize their face, voice, device and payment methods into a uniquely verifiable biometric identity that can be used for both login and payments. Wink’s unique and patented one-way anonymous encryption and biometric tokenization technology ensures full privacy protection that cannot be decrypted.

“Strong authentication together with a wonderful customer experience is the most vital step in e-commerce. For every business, regardless of size, any compromise or data breach affects the bottom line and damages reputation,” said Gary Bender, Carneros Bay CEO. “This is a pain point we hear from our portfolio companies across varying industries. Wink is combating this problem head-on by enabling businesses to modernize their authentication and payments experiences, without any disruption to their existing systems.”

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“Wink is a game-changer that will redefine the industry by bringing biometric payments and authentication in a mass market manner to all enterprises, irrespective of size or industry,” said Saurabh Ranjan, Founder and CEO at Cerracap Ventures. “With Wink, embracing new AI and biometric-based technology to eliminate fraud, increase conversions and enhance customer loyalty is no longer limited to Amazon or the ultra-sophisticated merchant. Everyone can enjoy these benefits.”

Chairman of Tntra Ventures and Wink Board Advisor, Mehul Desai, who has himself led previous successful ventures in the payments and digital wallet space, spoke of the confidence in Wink’s leadership. “I have had a phenomenal experience working with Deepak and his team over the years on several successful Fintech initiatives and ventures he’s led. We are very excited to partner together again, and build a world class cohort of technologists, consumer experience experts, investors and industry veterans to solve these cumbersome issues such as fraud, payment method chaos and data privacy.”

Wink has begun showcasing its exciting platform to select payment processors, networks, identity verification companies, e-commerce platforms and merchants with a launch expected later this year. Wink will be meeting key early adopters in the upcoming Retail Innovation Conference & Expo in Chicago May 10-12, and sharing its roadmap for powering use cases across e-commerce, Web3 payments and connected car payments in the near future.

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