Jewel Paymentech enters Wells Fargo’s startup accelerator program, gets funding

Jewel Paymentech, a Singapore-based financial risk management firm, today announced it received an undisclosed amount of investment from Wells Fargo as part of the American bank’s startup accelerator program.

It helps manage fraud risks using predictive analytics.

The investment forms part of the company’s series A round, which the team tells Tech in Asia is worth US$1.5 million. In January, the company snapped up around US$1 million in the same round from Tuas Capital Partners and institutional and private investors including Singapore-based investment partnership 8capita.

The company will undergo Wells Fargo’s six-month accelerator program, which was designed to explore ideas that will benefit the bank’s operations and its customers. The program will zoom in on areas such as analytics, mobile, cybersecurity, payments, lending, user-interaction design, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and digital marketing.

“Jewel Paymentech’s risk technology and focus on onboarding procedures and speed and scalability in a bank’s merchant acquisition efforts make it particularly interesting for us to explore,” says Steve Ellis, head of Wells Fargo’s Innovation Group.

Jewel Paymentech offers solutions to help banks and payment facilitators conduct merchant due diligence and manage fraud risks using predictive analytics. It also provides automated solutions to marketplaces to identify merchants who sell illegal and counterfeit goods.

The company is addressing a major headache for banks. That’s because if a merchant sells counterfeit goods, it’s often the banks that get swamped with complaints from consumers demanding their money back – and they may also be on the hook for compensation to intellectual property owners.