Startup Wink Gets Funding for Biometric Payment Processing

The number of online consumers has grown exponentially since the pandemic. Unfortunately, so did the number of fraud and malicious activities that target both businesses and consumers. This has resulted in the push for biometric technology integration into everyday life, including payment processing.

This is why companies continue to look for solutions to tighten their security while maintaining the same level of experience for their customers, so partnering with reliable high-risk merchant account providers is key.

Recently, a startup in North Texas called Wink has been granted pre-seed funding of $2.85 million for its new biometric payment processing solution. It will use voice and facial recognition technology in making purchases to eliminate the need to input financial information every time a consumer makes a purchase.

What You Should Know About Wink Technology

• Wink is a Texas-based biometric company that uses voice and facial recognition for payment processing. It bills itself as the “first zero-click camera checkout” that aims to help consumers make payments using only biometric authentication.
• The company was founded by CEO Deepak Jain who has extensive experience as an entrepreneur and angel investor.

He also founded Swych and Device Fidelity and is the global head of payments for fintech company Finablr. Jain explained, “There is an opportunity to simplify payments and authentication, starting with e-commerce, but eventually the entire web movement at large.”

• The company only targeted $1 million in funding, but venture capital firm Cerracap Ventures and advisory firm Carneros Bay granted the company a $2.85 million pre-seed funding round that raised its capital by almost $2 million.
• Jain explained that Wink’s 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’s system works by using voice and facial recognition technology to create a secure multi-factor authentication payment process to eliminate the need for providing any personal and financial information that fraudsters are on the lookout for.

• This new funding will allow Wink to introduce its product to the market later this year and the company revealed that it already started marketing its platform to e-commerce platforms, merchants, and payment processors.

These are in the hopes that they get to understand the benefits of this kind of technology, especially in the field of cybersecurity.

• Carneros CEO Gary Bender, which Wink calls one of its advisors, explained their firm’s investment in Wink: “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 damage reputation. 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.”

Once this technology is introduced to the market, businesses should start adapting it with the help of high-risk merchant account providers that can easily incorporate biometrics payment processing into their existing systems.