ONFIDO RAISES $25 MILLION TO CONTINUE EUROPEAN EXPANSION AND SCALE U.S. OPERATIONS
Idinvest, Wellington and CrunchFund invest in machine-learning background checking startup
LONDON – April 14, 2016 – Onfido, the leading identity verification and background checking provider, today announces that it has closed a Series B funding round of $25 million. Participants in the round include Idinvest Partners, Wellington Partners and CrunchFund. Raised to meet rising demand from the U.S. and international markets, Onfido will use the funds to scale its U.S. operations as well as continue to develop its machine-learning based technology.
Founded in 2012, Onfido - with offices in London and San Francisco - now works with more than 1,000 clients, many of which are Sharing Economy and FinTech businesses including Handy, Work Market, and Turo.
Husayn Kassai, CEO and co-founder at Onfido, says, “Background checking isn’t new - what has changed is business. Legacy background checks -- manual and dependent on a face-to-face meeting -- worked for an offline world. Today online companies need a new system that works instantly and remotely.
“Powered by machine-learning, we have built a product that allows businesses to accurately verify the identity of anyone in the world -- a driver in Delhi, a cleaner in Berlin, a host in New York -- within seconds. Only when the identity has been verified, do we run further searches such as Criminal or Anti- Money Laundering checks. This means we can always be certain that we’re checking the right person and prevents individuals from cheating the system by committing identity fraud.
This model has made Onfido the leading provider of background checks to the FinTech and Sharing Economy and our aim is to continue our global growth.”
“Onfido solves a fundamental problem for the digital economy: how do I know somebody is who they claim to be, and can I trust them? This problem persists across sectors and geographies, and Onfido’s solution is the only one that can truly verify identities remotely and at scale,” said Matthieu Baret, Partner at Idinvest Partners.
With 40 percent month-over-month growth in the US to date, the company will use the funds to meet the increasing demand. Onfido has found growing appetite for robust identity verification and background checks worldwide and is on track to carry out its 10 millionth check this year. The company also runs international checks in South America and Asia.
“Our machine-learning based technology is what sets us apart,” said Eamon Jubbawy, COO and co-founder at Onfido. “The more checks we carry out, the more intelligent our product becomes. It becomes quicker at identifying individuals with a thin or no credit file, more efficient at detecting sophisticated forgeries and more effective at verifying uncommon documents.”
“At Handy, nothing is more important to us than creating trust and safety between our customers and pros,” said Simona Stabingyte, General Manager at Handy. “Onfido’s Identity Verification technology helps us do that by providing the certainty that someone is who they say they are."
Ines Cormier, Business Development Manager at BlaBlaCar, the world’s leading long-distance ridesharing platform, says scalability is key: “Having tested many different providers, I can confidently say that Onfido’s technology is the best in the field. Its ability to handle high volumes of checks and return quick, accurate results means that Onfido can scale as fast as we do - this is crucial to our rapid international expansion.”
“We’re delighted to join Husayn, Eamon and Ruhul at this exciting stage,” said Baret at Idinvest. In what is set to be a testing year for many startups, Onfido has the product and business model that will allow them to continue their strong upward trajectory. This is why we invested and we look forward to working together as they expand to new markets and territories.”
Kassai said, “Trust is the new global currency. Whether it’s home-sharing or transferring money online, digital businesses rely on their users trusting each other in order to function and grow. With our team, our technology, and now Idinvest’s international expertise, we have everything we need to achieve our vision and become a global trust symbol, recognised by companies and consumers alike.”
About Onfido Onfido delivers next-generation background checks, helping global businesses verify anyone in the world - within seconds.
Powered by machine-learning technology, Onfido is a fast and robust way for businesses to verify identities — to ensure that someone is who they say they are — and run adverse history searches such as Criminal or Driving Checks. Built for an online world, Onfido’s solution enables businesses across sectors to run checks remotely and at scale.
Founded in 2012 by three entrepreneurs from Oxford University, Onfido has received over $30M in funding from investors including Idinvest Partners, Wellington Partners, Crunchfund and Oxford University. Today, Onfido works with over 1,000 clients globally, ranging from Turo to Handy. It’s vision: build the trust engine to power human interactions worldwide.
For more information, visit www.onfido.com and onfido.com/about.
About Idinvest With more than €6 billion under management, Idinvest Partners is a leading pan-European private equity firm focused on the mid-market segment. Idinvest Partners has developed several complementary areas of expertise including Venture Capital, Growth Capital and Private Debt investments in unlisted European companies as well as Primary and Secondary investments in European private equity funds.
Founded under the name AGF Private Equity in 1997, Idinvest Partners was formerly part of Allianz until 2010 when it joined forces with IDI as an independent firm.
Recent success stories of Idinvest Partners include Criteo ($2bn IPO on NASDAQ), Clear2Pay (sold to Fidelity for $400m+), Meetic (sold to Match.com for $500m+), Prosensa ($700m+ IPO on NASDAQ), Converteam (sold to General Electric for $3bn+), Kwik Fit (sold to Itochu for $850m), etc.
Idinvest Partners’ venture capital team is one of the most active and successful in Europe. In the last 10 years, Idinvest has invested in ~100 startups in the digital space including some great successes such as Criteo, Dailymotion, Deezer, Happn, Kantox, Meetic, Onfido, Pretty Simple, Secret Escapes, Sigfox, Talend, Vestiaire Collective, Withings, etc.
US Media Inquiries for Onfido: Eric Hausken Consort Partners for Onfido [email protected] cell: 512.827.9283
UK Media Inquiries for Onfido: Chiara Quadranti Director of Marketing [email protected] Cell: +44 7756 714 070