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International Internet Magazine. Baltic States news & analytics Thursday, 28.03.2024, 09:36

Personal identification services company Veriff raises USD 7.7 mln

BC, Tallinn, 19.06.2018.Print version
Estonian personal identification services startup Veriff has raised 7.7 million dollars, with the leading investor being Mosaic Ventures, reports LETA/BNS.

Veriff started meeting with investors immediately after participating in a round of pitching with Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y-Combinator, the company said.


The round of investors also include Taavet Hinrikus, Ashton Kutcher, Paul Buchheit, Elad Gil, Y-Combinator, SV Angel, ACE Ventures, LIFT99 and Superangel. Mosaic's Simon Levene, and Hinrikus, who co-founded and is chairman of TransferWise, have joined the supervisory board of Veriff. Veriff has raised altogether 8.4 million dollars of investments from 25 investment institutions and private investors. Previous investors include Sten Tamkivi, Ragnar Sass, Taavi Kotka and former LexisNexis CEO Andrew Prozes.


Veriff is to take advantage of the capital raised to expand its staff in preparation for a planned increase in the volume of business and to develop its SaaS product, which will make the world's most secure identification service accessible also to small and medium enterprises. The company currently employs a workforce of 25 people and the company is planning to increase its development team by 30 people over the year.


The 23-year-old founder and CEO of Veriff, Kaarel Kotkas, said that the investment is a big step toward the expansion of the company's business activity. "Veriff is like Stripe. While Stripe offers a quickly integrated payment service interface, then we offer an identification interface that can be integrated in minutes. This enables all web environments and mobile applications to determine that the one presenting the document -- passport, driver's license or ID-card -- equals with the owner of the document. This way we can prevent financial crimes by saving the money of honest people and businesses. Our mission is to win the trust of the internet by being the first choice in the field of identification services and thus turn Veriff into a verb," he said.


Veriff was founded in 2015 by the then 20-year-old Kotkas. The product was brought to the market in June 2016 when two companies -- Inbank and Hansapost -- integrated Veriff's service to reduce business risks originating from the procedure of a personal background check. By today, Veriff has more than 40 paying customers globally. These include financial enterprises, marketplaces, sharing economy companies and e-commerce sites. The company has its development and customer service team based in Tallinn and will soon move sales and marketing operations to the United States.






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