From the rise of digital commerce to the expansion of the gig financial system to the problem of a worldwide pandemic, digital identification know-how has been one of many larger beneficiaries of a lot of tendencies sweeping societies around the globe. Add to this a brand new emphasis on monetary inclusion and social fairness, and you’ve got a recipe for alternative for a lot of innovators within the digital identification house.
The most recent firm to reap the benefits of the present second is OCR Labs, which made its Finovate debut at our builders convention, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, in 2016. The corporate, headquartered in Sydney, Australia and based by Matthew Adams and Daniel Aiello, returned to the Finovate stage the next summer season, earning a Best of Show award for a demo of its ID verification answer.
OCR Labs combines 5 totally different applied sciences – ID doc OCR, doc fraud evaluation, liveness detection, video fraud evaluation, and face matching – in a single, end-to-end digital identification expertise. The corporate’s know-how has been deployed in a variety of verticals – from monetary providers and e-commerce to telecommunications and actual property – to supply AML and KYC-compliant digital ID verification and buyer onboarding.
This week OCR Labs introduced that it had raised $15 million (EUR 12.5 million) in Series A funding. The spherical was led Oyak Group of Turkey and can allow the corporate to increase into markets into Turkey, the U.Ok., and all through Europe. OCR Lab at present maintains a global headquarters in London.
“Nobody needs to spend hours making an attempt to show who they’re, whether or not it’s for a job or for a checking account, and we additionally wish to know we’re protected in opposition to identification theft and fraud,” OCR Labs co-founder Daniel Aiello mentioned. “Digital ID verification has a key position to play, however this 12 months we’ve additionally seen the constraints if hybrid fashions are used. Persons are a barrier and a danger, however absolutely automated know-how can have a huge effect on many industries and privateness. OCR Labs is constructed to be safe, frictionless and quick, and able to recognizing ID paperwork the world over.”
Having fun with triple-digit progress since its launch, OCR Labs has partnered with Reed Screening to assist companies verifying candidate identities through the COVID disaster forward of a possible in-person COVID verify mandate later this month. There’s some strain to permit companies to proceed distant COVID checking, an concept with which OCR Labs understandably sympathizes.
“The necessity for digital verification is rising exponentially,” Aiello mentioned. “This previous 12 months we’ve seen extra demand from new sectors as they attempt to navigate the pandemic and an incapacity to function in-person. We consider it has accelerated what wanted to occur.”
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