Identiq Raises $5M Seed, Launches Privacy-First Identity Validation Network so Companies Can Fight Fraud Together

Startup enables companies to verify the identity of new users joining their service, and vouch for ones they already know, all without exposing any user data whatsoever.

News provided by

Identiq

May 28, 2019, 10:00 ET

TEL AVIV, Israel, May 28, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Identiq announced today the launch of its Anonymous Verification Network, enabling companies to truly work together to fight fraud for the very first time. It also announced today a seed funding round of $5M led by Entrée Capital, with participants from leading VCs, including Slow Ventures, Vertex Ventures Israel and Oryzn Capital.

Identiq has created a distributed network allowing members to positively validate new users, and vouch for ones they already know, without sharing any personal user data whatsoever. Identity can be verified at critical moments in the customer journey, like onboarding or first payment, by making crucial connections between data points such as email, phone, address, IP, device or funding source, etc. This new approach leads to more accurate decisions, lower decline rates, reduced fraud, and better user experience for consumers.

Until now solutions attempted to validate identity information using large databases of private and personal user information, which by nature involve the risk of data being shared without user consent, or even stolen. Companies using these centralized solutions must expose their own user data, putting them at risk of breach-by-proxy, disclosing trade secrets, and violating privacy regulations.

Identiq, on the other hand, does not collect, share or store any user data whatsoever. Their FAIR (Fully Anonymous Identity Resolution) technology uses proprietary cryptographic protocols to obtain validation from other network members while preserving complete consumer privacy. This makes it fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations, and the first solution designed to complement the new sensitivities arising around such data privacy issues.

Interestingly, Identiq bucks recent trends in the Identity space and shuns the use of blockchain technology. They explained this decision in a post on Medium: http://bit.ly/notblockchain.

About Identiq

Identiq is a young startup company set to change the Identity Verification market. Unlike traditional identity verification vendors, the Identiq protocol can validate a new end-user without asking its customers to expose any user data whatsoever, setting a new standard for end-user privacy.

Identiq is bringing together like-minded companies to form the first fully anonymous global identity verification network. This will allow companies to onboard new customers with confidence, while reducing false positives, increasing approval rates and creating a better user experience. This technology can also be used for funding source validation, fast withdrawal, password recovery flows, and other high-risk activity validation.

Founded in 2018 in Tel Aviv, each Co-founder brings over 20 years experience to the company. CEO Itay Levy sold his previous startup Appoxee to Teradata back in 2015, and was a part of the founding team of Buzzmetrics which was acquired by Nielsen. His two Co-founders are Uri Arad, previously the Head of Analytics and Research at PayPal's risk department, and Ido Shilon, who previously led the Israeli R&D center for the Nielsen company.

For press or media inquiries, please contact:

Shmuli Goldberg
Chief Marketing Officer
[email protected]

SOURCE Identiq