Onfido Secures $100 Million to Set New Identity Standard for Digital Access

Q1 Marked by Record Number of New Bookings, Continued Expansion of AI Technology

• Led by TPG Growth, new funds to service global demand for identity verification and authentication
• Onfido’s AI technology confirms a user’s real identity by checking if their photo ID is genuine and then matching it against their selfie video – helping combat rising fraud and enabling access to digital services
• New data from Onfido identifies surge in demand for financial services, online healthcare and verifying volunteers amid COVID-19 pandemic

Onfido, the global identity verification and authentication company, announced today that it has raised a $100 million round of funding led by global investment firm TPG Growth. This brings the total investment in Onfido to $200 million and accelerates the company’s mission to deliver a new identity standard that helps everyone in the world easily and securely access digital services.

“Over the coming years, we’ll all be able to use our real identity to seamlessly access everything from financial services, online healthcare and trust marketplaces, to self-check-ins at airports, hotels and car rentals,” said Husayn Kassai, CEO and co-founder of Onfido. “Passwords will become a thing of the past as a method for accessing digital services, as will queuing for hours to vote in person. We’re standardizing the way everyone proves their real identity, in a similar way to how Facebook has standardized the way everyone shares their social identity, and LinkedIn has standardized the way everyone signals their professional identity. The unique combination of strategic capital as well as US-based TPG’s expertise in scaling companies like Uber and Airbnb make this the perfect investment partnership.”

Onfido has seen tremendous momentum with 130 percent year-over-year growth, attracting established brands worldwide as clients, including CLEAR, Revolut and Expensify and was a recipient of the Innovation of the Year in the Barclays Bank Supplier Awards. In January 2020, the company acquired a US-based tech company Aviata and partnered with some of the world’s largest identity companies including ForgeRock, SecureKey Technologies and Okta.

“Onfido’s use of AI to develop market leading tech is extraordinary,” said Mike Zappert Partner of TPG Growth. “There is enormous demand for secure and simple identity verification and authentication across major sectors and we see Onfido becoming the new standard for digital access. Their team has done a remarkable job in a relatively short period of time, and we look forward to partnering with them to continue their momentum into new use cases and geographies.”

Identity fraud is the most commonly committed crime in the US and one of the fastest growing in the world. With more businesses and services moving online, it makes it easier for criminals to hide their real identity, and they’re succeeding. The UN estimates that up to 5% of the world GDP is laundered money (that’s $2USD trillion) of which 99% goes undetected.

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Credit bureaus, created 150 years ago, have long been the de facto standard to prove a person’s real identity online, but continuous data breaches have undermined their reliability. They also create a closed world, blocking access to people who are under or unbanked and therefore not on a credit bureau. This means that half of the world’s adult population (approximately 2 billion people) are excluded from access.

Onfido’s mission is to solve the digital access problem by creating an open world where everyone’s real identity is their key to access. The company verifies a user’s real identity by analyzing their photo ID and then matching it against a selfie video, using AI to catch fakes more reliably than is possible by the human eye.

At a time when physical access is particularly challenging given the COVID-19 outbreak, the need for fast and secure digital access has never been greater. Examples of growth areas in recent weeks include online healthcare (weekly volumes increased by 4x); remittance and payments (1.3x); and paid and volunteer worker verifications needed to help with relief efforts (6x).

The new investment will be used to further invest in machine learning technology, consolidate existing markets, and service demand in new geographies.

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