Wise alumni raise €4m for regtech startup Salv

21 financial institutions across Europe have joined Salv’s collaborative crime-fighting network to prevent €6-7m of fraud.

Co-founded by a trio of Wise alumni, Estonia-based regtech Salv has closed a seed round of €4m.

CEO Taavi Tamkivi, COO Jeff McClelland and CTO Sergei Rumjantsev founded the fintech in 2018, which specialises in combating financial crime, providing anti-money laundering functionality for financial services companies.

According to Salv it is the “world’s first real-time collaborative crime-fighting platform”, minimising non-compliance and financial crime through its network of companies.

“The digitalisation of the financial industry has resulted in an avalanche of financial crime, and the numbers are only projected to grow,” CEO Tamkivi said.

“Our collaborative-crime fighting platform, Salv Bridge, is proven to be effective against money laundering, sanctions and fraud.”

The fintech says that so far companies within its network prevented €6-7m from getting to criminal-controlled accounts.

So far 21 financial institutions in Europe have joined the network, which has collectively solved almost 7000 investigations.

It credits this success to its direct lines of communication between institution which in turn helps fraud cases get solved “in minutes, not days”. 

“The funds allow us to add further functionality to our modular AML toolset and expand to new markets, helping more companies greatly improve their crime-fighting measures and thereby protect their end-customers,” Tamkivi added.

The company plans to use the funds to support expansion to new areas, including Poland, and to further develop its modular regtech technology.

The seed round was led by ffVC, with participation from German G+D Ventures.

LHV Bank took part in Salv Bridge’s pilot, and said it saw authorised push payment fraud cases drop “significantly” across the network in a short space of time.

“In the UK, where we process payment volumes worth hundreds of millions every day, Salv's solutions allow us real-time communication with other institutions within the network and provide us with tools to apply effective countermeasures to constantly changing patterns of financial crime,” LHV UK deputy CEO Andres Kitter said.