As more and more people and their associated personal data get online, there is an increasing focus on protecting digital identity. Globally, numerous organisations are working on advancing the systems that establish and verify digital identities for people, devices, and much more.
A new study has found that revenue for digital identity vendors will exceed $53B globally by 2026, doubling from $26B in 20211.
In addition, the research predicts that the increased demand for digital onboarding frameworks in the face of the ongoing pandemic will accelerate the uptake of digital identity services.
Meet, OCR Labs, an Australian-founded digital identity verification platform that aims to solve major challenges, including identity fraud and regulatory compliance, using its proprietary technology.
Today, London-based OCR Labs announced that it has secured a $30M funding in a Series B round led by New York-based Equable Capital.
How will the funding be used?
The company plans to use the funding to accelerate its international growth with a new office in North America, a direct sales force and hiring a global Chief Revenue Officer. To date, OCR Labs has raised $46M in funding.
John Myers, CEO of OCR Labs says, “2021 was an incredible year for OCR Labs, with continued validation from customers who have chosen us as their provider for online digital identity verification. This investment provides us with the capital to continue our growth while bringing a value-added investor to our board. Our vision remains unchanged: we strive to be the leading technology provider of digital identity verification, globally. The market opportunity continues to grow, and with our expansion in the US, and investment in our global sales effort, we’re in a phenomenal position to grow our customer base.“
Automated identity verification
Matthew Adams and Daniel Aiello founded OCR Labs in 2016 after identifying issues in the market that included the use of document templates and higher error rates with different skin tones from existing solutions.
“We set out to develop an identity verification solution ourselves, from scratch,” the founder says,
They wanted to streamline customer onboarding whilst protecting organisations against the increasing risk of fraud and identity theft.
The company’s proprietary technology provides fully automated identity verification through ID document validation combined with facial biometrics. The company does it through users’ IDs and a smartphone.
The platform supports Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations and improves customer identity verification while reducing fraud.
OCR Labs claims that its deep learning engines allow it to control the entire identity verification flow without human intervention.
Grown 500%
The company claims to verify more than 15,000 documents in over 230 countries and principalities.
Last year, OCR Labs has grown its customer base by 500 percent and doubled its growth rate every year in the last three years.
The UK company work across industries including financial services, government, telco, crypto, and a variety of platform-based businesses, including SaaS providers.
The company’s clients include the Australian Government, Vodafone, ZIP, and BMW.
Investor
Based out of New York, Equable Capital is a private equity firm. The VC firm seeks to invest in the commercial services, healthcare, information technology, industrial, and manufacturing sectors.
Jonathan Smidt, Founder of Equable Capital says, “Our investment in OCR Labs was the culmination of a lot of work to find the leading provider of identity verification using identity documents and facial matching. OCR Labs’ solution has the highest accuracy and lowest error rates while protecting customer data and privacy and meeting the highest third-party testing and accreditations standards.”
Smidt continues, “Matt Adams and Daniel Aiello have developed the leading technology for online digital identity verification that has been validated through OCR Lab’s adoption by the leading financial institutions, governments and more, globally. We’re excited to support the team in their international growth, particularly as they increase their focus on the US.”
Speaking on the investment and relationship with Equable Capital, John Myers, adds, “We are extremely appreciative of our original investors Halkin Ventures and OYAK for their support and faith and we are already seeing the impact Equable Capital is having on OCR Labs by bringing Jonathan’s expertise operating in both the US and European markets as well as his deep set of relationships across a broad set of industries and potential customers. We are excited to have Equable as an investor and partner as we expand in North America.”
