Onfido

Onfido
Private
Industry Identity verification and background checking
Founded July 2012 (2012-07) in London, England, United Kingdom
Founder Husayn Kassai, Eamon Jubbawy, Ruhul Amin
Headquarters Covent Garden, London
San Francisco, California
Lisbon, Portugal
Number of employees
 100+
Website onfido.com

Onfido is a software company that helps businesses verify people's identities using a photo-based identity document, a selfie and artificial intelligence algorithms.[1] It was founded in July 2012 by three former students at Oxford University: CEO Husayn Kassai, COO Eamon Jubbawy, and CTO Ruhul Amin. Onfido is headquartered in London and has 150 employees in offices across San Francisco, New York, Lisbon, and New Delhi.

History

Husayn Kassai, Eamon Jubbawy, and Ruhul Amin first met when they were students at Oxford University. Kassai met Jubbawy were members of the university's Oxford Entrepreneurs society. At one point, the three entered discussions of forming a new company after they had identified the inefficient process of getting background checks completed in order to secure jobs in the finance industry.[2] Each went through a check that took from 2-6 weeks. They spotted that 80-90 percent of a background check was done manually and therefore prone to human error. Background-checking companies also have runners on the ground in many countries to manually go into police stations and courthouses to check records. Manual checking is also often handled on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis and there are 13 separate jurisdictions in Germany, 116 in France and 3,200 in the U.S.[3] They decided to build a technological solution to the problem and secured seed funding of £200,000 from Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, launching Onfido in August 2012. The three secured initial deals with around 10 small web publishing companies. In January 2013, Onfido secured its first major client, Hassle.com.[4]

In February 2015, Onfido raised $4.5 million from a Series A funding round to help expand the business.[5] and in mid-2015, the company opened its office in San Francisco, California, and, several months later, hired former Google director Ed Ungar as its CCO to help with its growth.[6] By April 2016 it had done almost 10m background checks[7]

While initially focused on doing background checks for businesses hiring large numbers of permanent staff and contractors, by September 2017 it had shifted its focus to financial services and e-commerce companies. These companies are required to verify the identities of people with whom they do business as part of "Know Your Customer" (KYC) regulations and to help prevent fraud. Onfido helps them to do this without onerous background checks.[1] The company also wants to help get people who don't currently have bank accounts into the banking system.[8] Almost 40% of the world’s adult population is excluded from opening a bank account, most often due to having thin credit files, or being new migrants without the requisite documents needed for in-person verification and legally required Anti-Money Laundering checks.[9]

In 2017 the company had 1,500 customers including Square, Revolut and Zipcar.[1]

Service

Onfido provides several types of identity verification and background checks through its online platform. Almost everyone now has a smartphone with a built-in camera and Onfido is able to use this to compare and cross-reference a person’s facial biometrics with their identify document, such as driver’s license. The person’s identification can then be checked against global databases for any issues.[10] It uses manual and automated machine learning technologies, including optical character recognition and face detection, to verify the passport or ID card of an applicant to prevent fraud. Onfido also conducts right to work, PEP and sanctions, criminal history, and education and employment verification checks using multiple data sources.

Accolades

In 2015, Onfido received an award at the inaugural TechCities Awards in the Thames Valley category.[11] In 2016, Onfido made the FinTech50 list of companies that list the best new businesses.[12] Also in 2016, Kassai, Jubbawy, and Amin appeared on Forbes' annual 30 Under 30 list of top young leaders across 20 industries for Onfido.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Lunden, Ingrid (September 27, 2017). "Onfido raises $30M more for its AI-based identity verification technology". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
  2. 1 2 "Forbes 30 Under 30". Forbes. 2016. Retrieved 15 October 2015.
  3. ↑ Kepes, Ben (November 23, 2015). "Attempting to make the sharing economy safer with Onfido". Computerworld. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
  4. ↑ Shead, Sam (12 January 2015). "This Oxford grad quit his job at Merrill Lynch after just a week to build a tech startup that's now worth millions". Business Insider UK. Retrieved 15 October 2016.
  5. ↑ Fowler, Ryan (18 February 2015). "Onfido secures $4.5m in funding". Tech City News. Retrieved 15 October 2016.
  6. ↑ "Onfido snags Google executive to boost global growth". Startups. 2 October 2015. Retrieved 15 October 2016.
  7. ↑ MacBride, Elizabeth (April 30, 2016). "Fast-Rising Onfido, With Almost 10M Background Checks Done, Says It Can Help The Migrant Job Crisis". Forbes.com. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
  8. ↑ Kharpal, Arjun (September 27, 2017). "Onfido, a start-up that uses selfies to verify your identity online, raises $30 million". CNBC. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
  9. ↑ "1Onfido targets the unbanked with machine learning". CNBC. January 17, 2017. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
  10. ↑ Sawers, Paul (September 27, 2017). "London-based identity verification startup Onfido raises $30 million from Microsoft, Salesforce, others". VentureBeat. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
  11. ↑ "TechCities Awards shortlist published". Tech City Insider. 5 November 2015. Retrieved 15 October 2016.
  12. ↑ "The FinTech50 2016". FinTech City. 2016. Retrieved 15 October 2016.
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