Estonian Selfie Authentication Startup Raises $69M in Series B

Estonian selfie authentication startup Veriff has raised $69 million in a Series B funding round. The investments were led by the venture capital firms IVP and Accel.

The news comes on the heels of Veriff’s launch of its Face Match solution, the latest offering in a booming selfie-based identity verification market. The solution is designed to match an end user’s face to images of their official ID, and Veriff says Face Match scans over a thousand data points in the process, and that it can recognize government-issued IDs from more than 190 countries.

It’s an approach to remote identity verification that has seen a dramatic spike in interest since the outbreak of COVID-19, with businesses and other organizations around the world having suddenly been pushed into digital channels to interact with customers and employees, prompting a need for reliable and convenient remote authentication solutions.

Veriff may get some special attention thanks in part to its unusual story. The company was founded by Kaarel Kotkas in 2015 when he was just 20 years old, and it was selected for the Y Combinator accelerator program in 2018. The young CEO now oversees a staff of more than 230 employees.

“Veriff is setting the standard for the IDV market and we’re proud to support Kaarel Kotkas and team as they build a large, mission-driven company,” asserted IVP general partner Jules Maltz.

Accel partner Matt Weigand, meanwhile, called the startup an identity verification “powerhouse”, adding, “We look forward to supporting Veriff’s efforts to help companies prevent online crime and establish a vital aspect of their business: building trust with customers.”

As a term of the financing, both Maltz and Weigand have been appointed to Veriff’s Board of Directors, where they join Mosaic Ventures co-founder and partner Simon Levene and Wise Chairman and angel investor Taavet Hinrikus.

In a statement announcing the funding round, Veriff indicated that it will use the financing to “continue building on its fast-growing market opportunity in the U.S.,” with Kotkas asserting, “we look forward to partner up with more companies to solve their identity verification challenges and work towards bringing more trust online.”

–

April 12, 2021 – by Alex Perala