Checks every new or changed vendor bank account before an SME pays it
TL;DR Payeelock sits between a small company's accounting software and its bank. Before a payment batch goes out, it checks that each vendor account really belongs to that vendor and flags changes that look like fraud. Finance heads at SMEs and NGOs pay a monthly fee.
Indians lost ₹22,845.7 crore to cyber fraud in 2024, about three times the 2023 figure, across more than 22.6 lakh reported incidents[1]. A good chunk of the business losses follow one tired script - an email that looks like it's from a supplier asks the accounts team to pay a "new" bank account.
India doesn't publish a separate count for this. In the US, business email compromise drew 21,442 complaints and about US$2.77 billion (around ₹26,800 crore) in losses in 2024[2].
Who gets hit hardest? Small finance teams where one person approves every payment and nobody has the time to pick up the phone and check.
Payeelock connects to your accounting system and watches the vendor master. When a bank account is added or changed, it checks the account holder's name with the bank, compares it with the vendor's GST and registered name, and asks the vendor to confirm through a contact already on file, never the one in the new email.
Before each payment run, a model trained on the company's own history flags anything odd. Think a first payment to a new account, an amount far above the usual, or a change made a day before a large invoice. Payeelock never touches the money. It only clears or holds the batch.
The seed idea was behavioural biometrics, like typing patterns, and that works for bank logins but a 40-person company or an NGO rarely runs systems that capture them. The loss happens at the payee's account, so that is where the check belongs.
The finance head or the chartered accountant who approves payments. Your targets are small and medium firms and larger NGOs with regular vendor payments. A basic account check costs about ₹3 per call[3], so you can't charge for the check itself. The price has to come from the workflow, alerts and audit trail around it. A flat monthly fee by vendor count is my working guess, since I found no public Indian price list.
Reported cyber fraud losses in India roughly tripled between 2023 and 2024[1]. Account checks that return the holder's name are now cheap and instant through payment APIs[3], so routine checks make sense even for small firms. And a pilot can plug straight into the accounting software a firm already keeps its vendor list in.
Nobody publishes a figure for India's vendor-payment fraud prevention market. The buyer pool is countable though - the Udyam portal lists 5,45,120 small and 42,017 medium enterprises[4]. Treat the US loss figure as a sign of how big this fraud type can get[2], not as Indian demand.
One European vendor-verification firm checks vendor accounts across the purchase-to-pay chain for more than 600 large companies, with connectors to big enterprise systems[5]. Payment firms sell account-verification APIs in India[3], but not an accounts-payable workflow. The gap is a simple tool for Indian SMEs and NGOs that plugs into the accounting software they already use.
| Difficulty | Moderate (38/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹45–90 L |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The build itself is modest. The hard part is the integrations with tonnes of accounting tools and banks, and keeping false holds low enough that finance teams do not switch the thing off. Then you have to sell prevention to owners who haven't been hit yet, which is no easy task. Every new connector adds support work too.
No licence is needed as long as Payeelock never holds or moves money. Stay a checking layer.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
AI should flag, not decide. A person confirms every change with the vendor through a known contact, and the model's false alarms need tuning per client.
Want to work out the AI layer for Payeelock? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I like this for a founder who knows SME finance teams and accounting software channels. If you're hoping to sell "AI" on its own then it's a weak fit. First prove that chartered-accountant firms will roll it out across their clients, because they reach SMEs far more cheaply than any sales team you can afford.
Plan for roughly ₹45–90 L, mostly accounting integrations, verification API costs and sales to finance teams.
Not if you never hold or move money. Payment aggregator authorisation is for firms that handle funds, and the DPDP Act covers vendor data.
Yes. Vendor payment fraud is a global problem, and similar tools already sell in Europe. Bank data access differs by country.
The free Payeelock validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the payments and data-protection checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for finance heads, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Payeelock or something close to it? The make-or-break step is finding a channel, such as CA firms, that sells it before a fraud happens, and that's the kind of thing I help founders with. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.