Frefins, a South Korean startup building financial infrastructure for the rental-to-ownership market, has secured a strategic investment from Alantes Corporate Finance (ACF), a New York-based structured finance and alternative investment firm.

Frefins was founded in 2022 by Sangyong Shin, who previously built iParking into South Korea’s largest AI-powered parking management company before successfully selling it to SK Innovation E&S and NHN. The latest investment follows the company’s Pre-Series A round, which closed in February, and marks a significant milestone: recognition from the global structured finance community that Frefins’ proprietary rental receivables infrastructure — delivered as a SaaS platform — has the potential to operate at an international scale.

The traditional rental finance market has long struggled with what practitioners call “data invisibility” — real-time shifts in asset location, difficulties verifying contract authenticity, and a lack of transparency in operational data. These challenges have made it difficult for institutional investors to monitor the health of physical asset receivables in real time, limiting their ability to manage risk effectively. As a result, rental receivables have historically lagged behind accounts receivable and real estate finance in terms of financial market penetration.

Frefins addresses these structural gaps by digitizing the full lifecycle of rental and subscription operations, then using the resulting data to provide granular analysis and management of rental receivables. Its core value proposition is serving as a “financial layer” that reduces risk exposure for financial institutions — making physical asset-backed lending more tractable for large capital markets.

ACF, which specializes in structuring capital and providing advisory services through a global investment network, determined that Frefins’ data-driven risk management architecture could become a viable financial infrastructure platform for global asset securitization and structured finance markets. Under the partnership, the two companies plan to deepen collaboration with global investors and financial institutions, and to build out a cross-border capital raising structure that connects physical asset-backed financial assets with overseas capital markets.

“We have built an infrastructure that enables transparent risk management of physical assets through data,” said Sangyong Shin, CEO of FreeFins. “Through this partnership with ACF, we aim to grow into a financial platform that can operate in global capital markets.”

Frefins currently provides Rental Transformation (RX) solutions applicable across diverse industries including robotics, mobility, home appliances, and medical devices. Registered as an official online loan brokerage firm with the Financial Supervisory Service, the company has established expertise in physical asset finance including ABL (Asset-Backed Lending) and accounts receivable factoring.