SC Ventures Still Backs audax After a $110 Million Bet

$110 million of Standard Chartered capital now sits behind audax Financial Technology, the Singapore digital banking spinout SC Ventures took public on 21 September 2023. Three years later the parent is still writing cheques, and the public case list still fits on one screen.

The wager was never a consumer app. It was that a global bank could package the stack that ran its own Banking-as-a-Service unit and sell that kit to other banks, without asking those banks to rip out their cores.

The Bank’s Own Stack, Sold as a Product

SC Ventures, the innovation and fintech arm Standard Chartered set up in 2018, carved audax out of SC nexus, the white-label BaaS unit that had already gone live in Indonesia. Kelvin Tan, who had been managing director and global head of SC nexus, became chief executive and took most of his team with him. The Latin root of audax, he said at launch, is courage.

The product is an end-to-end digital banking platform Tan has since called a bank-in-a-box for retail and SME work. Modules cover staff and customer screens, deposits, lending, servicing and reporting. The pitch to incumbents is coexistence: plug the kit in beside the core you already have, then use it for two jobs, a new digital bank or a BaaS channel sold on to platforms.

That origin is the advantage and the problem. Through SC nexus, Standard Chartered billed itself as the first global bank to offer BaaS in Asia. Other banks buying the same stack are being asked to hire a vendor that still lives inside a competitor’s group. Tan has described audax as both an independent cloud-native firm and a Standard Chartered subsidiary. Both can be true. Buyers hear the second fact first.

BukaTabungan Was the Only Proof That Counted

The proof of concept is BukaTabungan, the digital savings product Standard Chartered and Indonesian commerce firm Bukalapak launched on 5 September 2022. The 2022 release promised paperless account opening in as quickly as five minutes, using facial biometrics and Indonesia’s E-KTP identity system. By the 2023 spinout, SC Ventures put the same journey at two minutes.

Alex Manson, who leads SC Ventures, tied that launch to Bukalapak’s base of more than 150 million users and 20 million business owners. Tan later said the work tripled Standard Chartered’s customer base in Indonesia within six months, at a fraction of usual acquisition cost, and that 98 percent of those users were new to the bank. Andrew Chia, Standard Chartered’s cluster chief executive for Indonesia and ASEAN markets, called it a new model for acquiring and servicing customers at scale.

The 2023 launch note also named Sociolla, a beauty retailer, and a third partner in a second market due in the fourth quarter of 2023. Neither appears as a live case on audax’s own customers page. The Indonesia numbers remain the only volume story the company still leads with.

BUKATABUNGAN AT THE SCALE AUDAX STILL CITES

• Account opening: Two minutes in the 2023 spinout note, down from a five-minute claim at the 2022 launch.
• New-to-bank share: 98 percent of users were new to Standard Chartered.
• Growth claim: Tan said the Indonesia customer base tripled within six months of launch.
• Distribution: Bukalapak’s base of more than 150 million users and 20 million business owners.

Those figures are why the spinout happened. They are also why the next test had to be a bank that was not Standard Chartered.

$110 Million Later, audax Is Still a Subsidiary

Singapore filings with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, reviewed in early July 2025, show a fresh US$5.6 million injection into audax. That took total funding to US$110 million. The money is parent capital, not a priced round from outside funds. It is the clearest read on how much Standard Chartered still thinks the kit is worth.

The commercial contract never ended. audax kept powering SC nexus for current and future Standard Chartered partnerships, which means the first customer is still the shareholder. Headcount sits in the 51-200 band on the company’s LinkedIn page, with the office at 51 Bras Basah Road in Singapore.

The launch deck pointed at a much larger prize. BCG and QED, in their 2023 paper Reimagining the Future of Finance, put the B2B2X pool, business-to-business-to-any-end-user, at $440 billion in annual revenues by 2030. Mordor Intelligence, covering a narrower slice, estimates the Asia-Pacific BaaS market itself at $5.26 billion in 2026. audax is selling into the second number, with slides written against the first.

THE WAGER ON A CALENDAR

1. 5 September 2022: Bukalapak and Standard Chartered launch BukaTabungan on the nexus stack.
2. 21 September 2023: SC Ventures spins the stack out as audax, with Tan as chief executive.
3. 28 February 2024: audax partners with Thought Machine and its Vault Core system.
4. 11 December 2024: audax partners with Tuum, aimed first at Middle East banks.
5. 2 July 2025: FPT and audax set a $100 million three-year revenue target; ACRA filings around the same week show the $5.6 million top-up.
6. 8 December 2025: audax partners with 10x Banking on core modernisation.
7. 6 May 2026: Maybank Indonesia Syariah and Muslim Pro launch Amanah Pro in Jakarta.

Each date adds a supplier or a cheque. Only the last one adds a second named bank on the customers page.

Maybank Put Hajj Savings Inside Muslim Pro

Amanah Pro is the first public live product that is not Standard Chartered’s. Maybank Indonesia Syariah and Muslim Pro, the prayer and Quran app with more than 190 million downloads, launched the service in Jakarta on 6 May 2026. audax said on 8 July 2026 that its platform sits underneath, and that the go-live came within 18 months of the Maybank collaboration being announced.

Users open a Maybank Tabungan MyArafah Hajj savings account from inside Muslim Pro, with Hajj savings onboarding from days to minutes and no branch visit. Indonesia has about 240 million Muslims, and the product is sold as the first embedded Islamic banking tie-up between a global Muslim lifestyle app and an Islamic bank. Dato’ Muzaffar Hisham, chief executive of Maybank Islamic, said the group now has a stronger digital base for Shariah services across priority Southeast Asian markets.

The right way to serve it is to meet users inside the platforms they already trust.

Kelvin Tan, chief executive, audax, on the Amanah Pro launch

In a March 2026 conversation Tan also named Jeel, a digital offering tied to Saudi Arabia’s Riyad Bank, among clients. Jeel does not appear on the public customers page beside Standard Chartered and Maybank. Until it does, the independent-bank proof is one live Islamic savings flow in Indonesia.

Four Partners and a Thin Public Roster

Unable to be a full core vendor on its own, audax has spent two years renting credibility from people who are. Thought Machine brought Vault Core in February 2024. Tuum followed in December 2024 for Middle East work, with audax chief commercial officer Mike Breen selling a best-of-breed stack. FPT, the Vietnamese IT group, became the largest regional delivery partner in July 2025. 10x Banking, the cloud core firm founded by Antony Jenkins, joined in December 2025.

FPT and audax said they are aiming at $100 million in revenue over three years across Asia Pacific and the Middle East. FPT Software chief executive Pham Minh Tuan put the work on a relationship that began in 2020, not 2023, and on a bench of 3,000 fintech engineers serving more than 200 clients. FPT’s 2024 group revenue was $2.47 billion. The $100 million target, set in July 2025, runs to 2028. No later public split has been issued.

Jenkins said banks should not have to choose between speed and resilience. Tan went further on cost.

Traditional core banking projects take years and cost tens of millions. Our partnership with 10x Banking changes that equation entirely, banks can launch full digital services in as fast as six months for a fraction of the cost.

Kelvin Tan, chief executive, audax, on the 10x Banking partnership

WHO AUDAX HAS STOOD UP BESIDE

10x says its platform processes more than a billion real-time transactions a year, holds 99.99 percent uptime, can handle 100,000 transactions a second, and can onboard 60,000 customers in a day. Those are 10x’s figures, not audax’s. They tell you which core audax wants to sit in front of. They do not tell you how many banks have bought the combined kit.

After the Spinout, Still the Parent’s Venture

On 22 July 2025, Standard Chartered’s own account posted that it had partnered with Audax, “our venture incubated by SC Ventures,” and FPT. Two years after the spinout memo, the parent still spoke in the possessive. That is how a lot of the market still hears the company, and it is why a short public roster matters more here than it would for a vendor with no banking parent.

We've partnered with Audax, our venture incubated by SC Ventures and FPT to bring smarter, scalable, and inclusive digital innovations across Asia and the Middle East.

With digital banking expected to surge by 110% in Asia Pacific and 58% in the Middle East by 2030, our alliance… pic.twitter.com/3JDtTPFi9T

— Standard Chartered (@StanChart) July 22, 2025

FPT’s note put Asia Pacific digital banking at $360 billion by 2030, a 110 percent rise, and Middle East digital banking at $2.6 billion, a 58 percent rise. Those are digital banking pools, not the $5.26 billion APAC BaaS slice, and they are not the $440 billion B2B2X slide from 2023. audax can be in a growing market and still be a small name inside it. Global embedded-finance leaderboards still run through independent processors such as Stripe, Adyen, Plaid, Marqeta and SoFi. A bank-owned Singapore spinout does not show up there.

Manson joined Standard Chartered’s group management team in August 2024, a move the bank framed as tying ventures tighter to the core. For audax that cuts two ways. Group air cover helps when a buyer wants a balance sheet behind the software. It hurts when the buyer is another bank that competes with Standard Chartered in the same cities.

WHAT THE $110 MILLION BET STILL HAS TO PROVE

• A third named bank: The customers page still leads with Standard Chartered and Maybank Islamic; Jeel is a CEO mention, not a published case.
• Volume after Bukalapak: No later public user count has replaced the 2022-23 Indonesia figures.
• The FPT clock: The $100 million target set in July 2025 has not been broken out in a later statement.
• Distance from the parent: Standard Chartered still introduces audax as our venture, which is a feature for some buyers and a block for others.

Banks do not always allow vendors to print their names. That is a fair caveat. It is a weaker one for a company that does print the names it can, and that has had three years, four core partners and $110 million to find a longer list.

Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand Stay on the Map

On 28 August 2026 Tan was still making the BaaS case for Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, talking about scale, inclusion and richer third-party data for onboarding and credit. Those are the same markets the original nexus work was built around. The sales map has not jumped to Europe or the United States. It has thickened around ASEAN and, through Tuum, FPT and 10x, the Middle East.

That is a coherent bet. Super-apps and faith-based apps already hold the customers. Banks that cannot rebuild a core in five years will pay for a layer that goes live in six months. Maybank’s Hajj flow is the first clean example of that pitch working for a bank that does not share a group logo with the vendor.

It is also a narrower outcome than the one sold when SC Ventures first launched audax. The 2023 memo talked about becoming a home-grown global technology company, starting in APAC. The 2026 company is a funded Standard Chartered subsidiary with a modular stack, a Vietnamese delivery army, rented cores, one famous Indonesia proof point, and one live Islamic savings product. The parent has not blinked on the capital. The market has not yet crowded in behind it.