Bureau: Building Control Infrastructure for the Digital Payment Revolution

By Ashish Aggarwal

We are excited to announce our investment in Bureau alongside friends at Sorenson Capital, Commerce Ventures, GMO Venture Partners, Village Global, Quona Capital, and XYZ Ventures.

There is no debate today that the ongoing digital transformation across emerging markets (EMs) has unlocked massive economic potential, with real-time payment systems driving financial inclusion and economic growth at unprecedented scales.

However, this rapid adoption has also exposed system vulnerabilities, which have given rise to increased fraud driven by the lack of adequate “control infrastructure.” Bureau is addressing these foundational gaps in security, identity, and compliance to facilitate end-to-end fraud prevention for digital businesses.

A Growing Nexus

There has been explosive growth in digital payments across emerging markets globally. India’s UPI processed nearly 10x the combined credit and debit card volumes in August 2024 (Source: Reserve Bank of India). In 2023, Brazil’s PIX accounted for 39% of all digital payments, while Indonesia’s digital commerce participation reached 45% by the end of 2019. And Saudi Arabia, where 57% of transactions were conducted digitally in 2021, is rapidly adopting real-time payment systems (Sources: Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia).

At the same time, digital fraud is increasing in parallel. In India, digital fraud is growing at 130% annually, with similar trends seen in other markets (Source: Reserve Bank of India Annual Report). In the first six months of 2024, Brazil has seen a 918% increase in fintech-related fraud, and Indonesia is estimated to have suffered from a 7.5x growth in identity fraud (Source: Sumsub). Across Southeast Asia, scam losses reached $5 billion in 2022 according to a study by Oliver Wyman.

Bureau’s Opportunity

Ranjan R Reddy founded Bureau in 2020 to help banks, fintechs, and platforms protect themselves and their customers from fraud. Today, Bureau has evolved into a global, real-time risk decisioning platform for identity verification, fraud prevention, and compliance management.

Bureau leverages advanced link analysis, predictive AI, and proprietary identity graph technology to detect and disrupt fraud networks, including fraud rings, money mules, account takeovers, and synthetic identities. By integrating digital and physical identifiers with real-time behavioral analysis, Bureau empowers enterprises to proactively identify anomalies and prevent sophisticated fraud.

Since inception, the startup has successfully verified 500M+ identities and protected over $500M of digital transactions. Some of Bureau’s customers include Kotak Mahindra Bank, Tata Capital, Rapido, Zepto, Bajaj Finance, IDFC First Bank and others. Outside India, the company currently has clients across the Middle East and South-East Asia and is expanding internationally into newer markets.

We’re looking forward to what’s next – and we're excited and grateful to be a part of this journey.

If you’re interested in how Bureau can help keep your customers safe: https://www.bureau.id/

If you’re interested in joining the Bureau team: https://jobs.bureau.id/