Reaching the 1.5-billion-dollar valuation makes Veriff the ninth Estonian unicorn, following the success of Skype, Playtech, Wise, Bolt, Pipedrive, Zego, ID.me, and Gelato. With 6.9 unicorns per million people, Estonia is a world leader in unicorns per capita.
The funding round, co-led by Tiger Global and Alkeon, joined by existing investors IVP and Accel, brings Veriff’s valuation to .5B, as it aims to expand its global customer base and deliver trusted online identity verifications.
Eightfold growth in 2021, more expected for the future
In 2021, Veriff rapidly increased verification volumes across the globe by more than 8 times, and by 20 times in the U.S. After two years of growing digital transactions online due to the pandemic, Veriff increased verification volume in the financial services sector by 10 times in 2021, making Veriff the primary identity verification provider for 95 per cent of its financial services customers. Marquee customers have helped fuel the 150% increase in customer growth in 2021, including the verification of users’ age to instil trust and safety in the growing digital metaverse environment.
The new financing will be used to accelerate Veriff’s global growth and invest in R&D, especially to advance product expansion. The company will also grow its sales and marketing teams to onboard more global clients and build on recent customer success programs. In addition, Veriff will expand its global workforce, 360 strong today and made up of 46 different nationalities and counting. Uniquely, Veriff’s AI automation enables it to scale volume rapidly without incrementally needing to grow its small team of verification specialists.
Through its AI-powered, video-first approach, Veriff is able to make online identity verification more accurate than physical face-to-face authentication and prevent more fraud than any other industry player. Secure global identity verification (IDV) enables businesses to unlock the full potential of the virtual world.
Rocketing growth continues
“Organizations and consumers needed to verify identities online more than ever before in 2021 – from onboarding remote employees, to creating a safe space for gaming in the metaverse, and conducting business fully online – which makes the establishment of digital trust and transparency incredibly critical,” said Kaarel Kotkas, CEO and founder of Veriff. “The gigantic boom in digital services has increased the demand for IDV for any business online, and every person on this planet can be a user of Veriff,” Kotkas added.
“Veriff has created an industry-leading product to ensure trust and safety online. Based on our research and customer calls, Veriff’s product performance leaves others far behind and should be used more widely by companies out there. We’re excited to support Veriff’s success and join their mission of making trust reliable and scalable online,” John Curtius, Partner at Tiger Global, noted.
“The tailwinds driving the adoption of digital identity products are clear, and Veriff is poised to become a leader in this rapidly evolving and growing space,” Deepak Ravichandran, General Partner at Alkeon Capital added.
Partnership with Starship
Veriff recently announced its partnership with Estonian soon-to-be unicorn Starship Technologies, the world’s leading provider of autonomous delivery services to provide authentication and re-verification services for its fleet of autonomous delivery robots in the UK. With this partnership, Veriff is adding an extra layer of safety and security to Starship’s services, making it the first company in the world to create a fully autonomous end to end delivery service for age-restricted items.
