Stopping real-time fraud before illicit funds leave the bank

This article is a part of Startup Spotlight, a series that features young, up-and-coming startups.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Public-interest technology organization Watchdog was approached by financial institutions in Sri Lanka looking for a reliable database of politically exposed persons. The request led Nisal Periyapperuma to build a solution that eventually became Dossiers.

😟 Problem

Banks across Asia face growing threats from stolen credentials, account takeovers, and money mule networks. Faster digital payments allow illicit funds to move within seconds, making traditional next-day reviews less effective.

At the same time, compliance teams must process growing numbers of alerts, many of which turn out to be false positives, slowing investigations and increasing operational costs.

💡 Solution

Dossiers provides a continuous fraud-prevention layer that verifies identities and tracks transactions, including:

• Onboarding identity verification uses a biometric liveness check to establish a baseline for future comparisons.
• Continuous screening checks customers against sanctions lists and adverse media without requiring manual reviews.
• Real-time transaction and device monitoring automatically trigger a new verification if behavior deviates from expected profiles.

Image credit: Dossiers

📊 Market size

Demand for fraud detection and anti-money laundering software is rising as financial institutions process larger volumes of digital transactions. This startup focuses on banks and financial services companies across South and East Asia, representing an estimated US$100 million market opportunity.

🤝 Team

• Nisal Periyapperuma. Co-founder and CEO. He previously co-founded Watchdog, where he developed public-interest technology and data platforms.
• Mudith Uswatta. Co-founder and CCO. He previously served as general manager at Calcey Technologies and has experience in enterprise technology sales.
• Nimesha Periyapperuma. Founding engineer. He specializes in building knowledge graphs from large-scale government datasets.

🚀 Traction

• Live at nine financial institutions and one crypto exchange in Sri Lanka.
• Selected for Google for Startups, receiving US$350,000 in Gemini AI credits.
• Partnering with established systems integrators and Swiss firm De Risk Partners for international expansion.

🏆 Competition

Global providers such as SAS primarily serve large international banks, while newer platforms including Sardine, rely heavily on Western identity data and cloud-based deployments.

Dossiers operates entirely within the bank’s infrastructure to ensure strict data residency. Its proprietary knowledge graph natively supports regional naming conventions across multiple local languages.

💰 Financials

🚩 Risks