valid8Me, the Irish digital identity SAAS platform, announced today that it has secured €12.5M funding from Grant Thornton Ireland, a provider of tax planning, advisory, and compliance advice.
How will the funding be used?
The company will use the funds to increase headcount and accelerate growth in Ireland and abroad. valid8Me aims to double its headcount to 60 by 2023.
Patrick Horgan, CEO of valid8Me says, “The idea that consumers repeatedly share their most sensitive data, often through insecure channels, to prove their identity is archaic. Valid8Me is fundamentally different, we empower consumers to maintain a reusable digital identity that can be used universally across all industries. Our platform addresses an enormous challenge for businesses by enabling enhanced AML compliance in a radically future-proof and cost-effective way, whilst offering their clients a more secure and convenient experience”
Adding, “This investment from Grant Thornton Ireland, combined with their global reach and multisector expertise, will act as a transformational partner in accelerating valid8Me’s ambitious high-growth strategy. Grant Thornton truly understands valid8Me’s vision to become the universal de facto standard for digital identity globally.”
Easing customer on-boarding process
In the recent past, customer onboarding has become a significant pain point for customers and businesses alike, with a lack of thinking resulting in businesses spending a disproportionate amount of budget and time manually validating, updating, and storing documents.
The average bank, for example, spends $60M per year on Know-Your-Customer (KYC) compliance.
Based out of Cork, Valid8Me pioneered reusable digital identity, helping businesses streamline proof of identity and onboarding processes with simplicity, certainty, and control.
The company allows individuals and corporations to securely store, share and manage their key Know-Your-Customer-related data.
The company says that its platform reduces customer onboarding costs by up to 50% and onboarding times by up to 90%, by using reusable digital identity vaults that simplifies the burden of sourcing, maintaining, and updating Know-Your-Customer documents for businesses.
The platform supports over 10,000 document templates from 248 countries and territories.
Speaking about the investment, Mick McAteer, Managing Partner of Grant Thornton Ireland said “We view the valid8Me platform as complementary to a number of our service lines and specifically addresses the needs of our clients across a number of sectors including financial services, legal, accounting, wealth management and real estate among others. We are excited to build our product and service offering in these sectors and bring real innovative solutions to our clients.”
Steve Tennant, Head of Financial Services Advisory at Grant Thornton Ireland said; “KYC and the process by which businesses look to onboard and verify client identities is broken. We deal with an increasing number of clients who are extremely challenged by the resource overhead in complying with AML & KYC regulatory obligations. Valid8Me offers a ground-breaking approach to solving this problem and importantly optimising the customer and client experience. We use valid8Me ourselves and have first-hand experience of how it has transformed our client onboarding processes.”
