Cork-based regtech startup Valid8me has today announced a capital injection of €12.5 million. The Irish startup has developed a SaaS platform that is transforming customer onboarding, making the processes more streamlined and secure.
Launched in 2021, Valid8me is on a mission to make customer onboarding an easier process – taking away the hassle and fuss, whilst maintaining compliance to increasingly complex and convoluted compliance regulations. Today, the startup has announced a new deal with Grant Thornton Ireland that will see the company picking up a €12.5 million investment.
Founded in Cork, Valid8me’s SaaS platform allows both individuals and corporations to securely store, share and manage their key Know-Your-Customer-related data. It has championed the use of reusable digital identity, which helps businesses streamline proof of identity and onboarding processes with simplicity, certainty and control.
Customer onboarding has become a significant pain point for customers and businesses alike in recent years. With a lack of connectivity and shared thinking, businesses are now spending a disproportionate amount of budget and time on manually validating, updating and storing documents.
Valid8me are aiming to change this.
Patrick Horgan, CEO of Valid8Me explained: “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”
With Vali8me, customer onboarding costs are reduced by a reported 50% and onboarding time is cut by up to 90%. Digital identity vaults empower this, simplifying the task of sourcing, maintaining and updating Know-Your-Customer documents for businesses. It also reduces risk and exposure for businesses around data privacy by removing the overhead of handling sensitive data via its reusable digital identity vault model.
It’s easy to get the ball rolling with the platform too – once set up with a profile, customers have a reusable identity that can be instantly verified across any business or industry. Further, as its digital, the likelihood of fraudulent documents and financial crime occurring is reduced.
The platform now supports over 10,000 different document templates from 248 different countries and territories. This fresh investment will be used to increase the startup’s team size, accelerate its growth in Ireland and expansion into key markets abroad.
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 added: “KYC and the process by which businesses look to on-board 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.”
