{"id":14663,"date":"2019-04-03T23:22:05","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T23:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/onfido-which-verifies-ids-using-ai-nabs-50m-from-softbank-salesforce-microsoft-and-more.html"},"modified":"2019-04-03T23:22:05","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T23:22:05","slug":"onfido-which-verifies-ids-using-ai-nabs-50m-from-softbank-salesforce-microsoft-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/onfido-which-verifies-ids-using-ai-nabs-50m-from-softbank-salesforce-microsoft-and-more.html","title":{"rendered":"Onfido, which verifies IDs using AI, nabs $50M from SoftBank, Salesforce, Microsoft and more"},"content":{"rendered":"

Security breaches, where malicious hackers obtain snippets of information that then get used to impersonate individuals in order to gain access to individuals\u2019 and businesses\u2019 sensitive financial and other private information, have become par for the course in the world of digital services.\u00a0More than 2.7 billion records<\/a> were \u00a0breached in a single incident this year in the US, and overall the damage from incidents like these potentially runs into the trillions of dollars globally.<\/p>\n

Today, a startup called Onfido<\/a>, which uses AI techniques combined with human verifiers to efficiently verify people are who they say they are when using digital services \u2014 is today announcing $50 million in funding to help address that ongoing \u2014 and growing \u2014 problem.<\/p>\n

The funding comes on the heels of some very strong growth for the startup, which was founded in London<\/a> but now operates most of its business out of San Francisco. In an interview, co-founder and CEO Husayn Kassai said that more than half of its customers, and most of its new growth, is coming out of the US.<\/p>\n

Onfido uses computer vision and a number of other AI-based technologies to\u00a0verify against some 4,500 different types of identity documents, using techniques like \u201cfacial liveness testing,\u201d to see patterns invisible to the human eye, now has 1,500 businesses as customers, primarily in categories like marketplaces and communities, gaming and financial services, including companies like Remitly, Zipcar and Europcar; and in the last year, it had sales growth of 342 percent. Kassai said that it has to date verified \u201ctens of millions\u201d of IDs.<\/p>\n

The money \u2014 a Series C2, technically<\/a> \u2014 is coming from a group that includes top strategic tech investors. The round is being co-led by\u00a0SoftBank Investment (SBI)<\/a> and Salesforce Ventures<\/a>, with\u00a0M12<\/a> (the new name for Microsoft Ventures), FinVC<\/a> and other unnamed new and previous investors are also participating. That\u2019s a signal not just of how the biggest companies in that sector today are grappling with this problem, but also what approach they are using to solve it.<\/p>\n

For SoftBank, the investment is separate from the Vision fund, founder and CEO Husayn Kassai noted, but it\u2019s notable that a lot of the businesses that have been backed out of that fund \u2014 companies like Didi, Uber, Oyo, Lemonade, and others \u2014 fundamentally rely on people trusting that they are handling personal details securely while also carefully vetting suppliers on the platform (meaning, they need and use services like Onfido\u2019s).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, both Microsoft and Salesforce have extensive enterprise businesses that could see multiple benefits from working with an identity verification provider, not just for their own purposes, but as a service that is sold on to its customers as part of a larger identity management and security offering.<\/p>\n

The company is not revealing its valuation but has raised around $100 million to date and Kassai confirmed that it was an upround, with \u201ca lot of happy investors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have strong metrics, and we have a long way to go in our growth,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of companies today offering services to help offer secure services to authenticate users, for example, to help them log on to their work accounts or to access their online banking services. Onfido\u2019s business focuses on the first step in all of this \u2014 customer onboarding \u2014 specifically around services geared towards consumers.<\/p>\n

The opportunity that has opened up for it has been the result of more than just a rise in breaches. There\u2019s also been a growing realization that a lot of the existing services that had been used for verification are simply not fit for purpose: either they too have been breached \u2014 as in the case of some of the bigger credit agencies like Equifax \u2014 or are not realistically efficient enough for how many online services run today, such as in the case of in-person verifications. (Onfido claims that its system can make a verification in as little as 15 seconds.)<\/p>\n

Or, they are part of the new guard that has shifted its approach to the business of ID verificiation, either by choice or force. One would-be competitor from the past, Checkr, is now a partner of Onfido\u2019s, Kassai noted. Others like Jumio \u2014 which is still grappling with the fallout from\u00a0major illegal missteps from previous management<\/a> \u2014 seem to still be trying to find their feet as standalone businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cFraud is rising and not going anywhere,\u201d Kassai \u2014 who co-founded the company with Ruhul Amin and Eamon Jubbawy \u2014 said. \u201cAnd the problem is that there are a dozen other companies that have not done a good enough job to detect it so far.\u201d While no service is perfect \u2014 Onfido says that its \u201crisk exposure\u201d is 0.0195 percent \u2014 he says that the advantage of building its service on top of AI means that the algorithms use every experience to continue honing its accuracy. \u201cWhat we learn from one client gets applied everywhere,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has never been a more important time for companies to build trust with their customers by showing they are one step ahead of fraudsters,\u201d said Frank van Veenendaal, the ex-vice chairman of Salesforce, who is joining the board with this round. \u201cI believe Onfido has the unique opportunity to transform the digital identity market and deliver robust and scalable authentication-as-a-service, similar to how Salesforce transformed customer relationship management.\u201d<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/lqBIPHMF7b0\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Security breaches, where malicious hackers obtain snippets of information that then get used to impersonate individuals in order to gain access to individuals\u2019 and businesses\u2019 sensitive financial and other private <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-14663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t