Onfido announces $100m funding round as ID verification interest soars

Interest in remote identification verification has reached a whole new level in the past month and a half.

In the last weeks Husayn Kassai, CEO and co-founder of identification verification startup Onfido, has spoken to just about everyone on using his technology. 

From supermarkets looking to overhaul their online age verification, to exam boards seeking a better way to check if students are cheating in online exams, to government ministers asking how the technology could be used to verify identity for financial relief.

It’s therefore maybe no surprise that today Onfido closed its biggest funding round to-date, raising $100m in a round led by US investment giant TPG Growth—a backer of Netflix, Airbnb and Uber.

The cash, according to Kassai, was raised in “quite a competitive round” given the current circumstances and is earmarked for global expansion, doubling down on Onfido’s North America operations, as well as scaling up Onfido’s technology.

“We’re going to develop this technology further,” he told AltFi. 

“Only 1 per cent of the market has adopted this approach of remote identity verification, yet identity theft is the biggest crime in the world, and in this online world criminals can increasingly hide their identity.”

Looking forward Kassai expects healthcare will be Onfido’s next big industry to crack, helping consumers to securely unlock their sensitive healthcare information.

“Over the next few years we’re looking to make passwords a thing of the past,” the CEO says, nodding towards voting and digital identity as the holy grail of Onfido’s mission.

In February Onfido announced year-on-year revenue growth of 130 per cent, and if you’ve used a fintech app like Revolut,Bunq or Expensify recently you’ve used its technology.

“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,” said Mike Zappert, partner at TPG Growth.

“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.”