Technology

Posted on August 17, 2016 by staff

Identity specialist Onfido ‘raises seven-figure sum’

Technology

Identity specialist start-up Onfido has reportedly raised a seven-figure sum in funding from venture capital firms and angel investors.

London-based Onfido will look to scale its background-checking machine-learning technology with the money, specifically the Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) products.

The firm, founded in 2012, helps financial firms verify the identity of potential employees and customers and is looking to attract more retail banks to its customer base.

“Fintech innovation is disrupting and reshaping how financial companies operate,” said Husayn Kassai, CEO and co-founder.

“But traditional ID verification technology is not keeping up.

“On average, between 30 and 50 per cent of people going through in-person ID verification do not complete the manual onboarding process.

“Onfido automates KYC/AML to eliminate inefficiencies and improve the experience on both sides of the transaction.”

Onfido could not confirm the amount of new investment to BusinessCloud.

The investing firms are Salesforce Ventures, the corporate investment arm of the tech giant, and London-based Talis Capital.

Salesforce recently acquired deep learning technology start-up MetaMind with a view to embedding artificial intelligence within its services.

Matus Maar, partner at Talis Capital, said: “It’s critical that businesses today can quickly identify fraudsters and other risky actors.

“But just as importantly, they must be able to quickly verify those who should be trusted, in order to onboard them without any delay.

“Onfido is uniquely qualified to apply advanced technology to improve retail finance transactions.”

Before the new investment Onfido, which also has an office in San Francisco, had raised a total of £23.5 million and has 1,000 clients around the world.

It was founded by Ruhul Amin, Husayn Kassai and Eamon Jubbawy, who met at Oxford University.

Richard Law, CEO of fellow identity specialists GB Group, recently told BusinessCloud he is confident the business will continue to thrive without him when he retires.

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