Irish regtech firm ID-Pal raises €1m to accelerate global expansion

29 Sep 2020

From left: Simon Montgomery, director of operations; Colum Lyons, founder and CEO; Rob O’Farrell, CTO; James O’Toole, CBO; and Shelley McKinney, CMO. Image: Conor Healy/Picture It Photography

The funding will allow the SaaS verification start-up to invest in sales and marketing activities, resources, system processes and technology.

ID-Pal, an identity-verification start-up based in Dublin, has raised €1m in its latest round of funding. Led by Act Venture Capital and a number of private investors, the fresh funding will help the company as it continues to expand in Ireland and internationally.

Client companies can use ID-Pal’s software to verify the identity of their customers securely in real time with “minimal technical effort”, according to the company. Customers span SMEs and large multinational businesses, including AIB, Elavon, Fexco, Mercer, One4All and Salesforce.

ID-Pal was founded in 2016 by CEO Colum Lyons, previously a stockbroker for Cantor Fitzgerald and a high-frequency trader, and James O’Toole, who used to be a management consultant at Accenture.

The regtech business was featured as Start-up of the Week on Siliconrepublic.com in 2018. Since then, its tech has been used in more than 43 countries by companies in payments and financial services, insurance, property and legal.

According to Lyons, ID-Pal allows clients to “seamlessly and securely onboard new customers” with its SaaS tools. He said the recent funding will allow ID-Pal to invest further in sales and marketing activities, resources, system processes and technology.

“This funding will help us to continue to develop our product offering and the technology behind it, which we can then deliver to new and existing customers in a flexible and bespoke manner, making sure their compliance and customer needs are easily addressed,” Lyons said.

He added that despite the impacts of Covid-19 on businesses around the world, ID-Pal has been “fortunate enough” to maintain its growth trajectory.

“There has been strong and continuing market interest in our solutions, including international markets,” he said. “We have gone from 11 to 19 employees in the last nine months, with further roles to come in line with our growth through 2021 and beyond.”

Lisa Ardill was careers editor at Silicon Republic until June 2021

editorial@siliconrepublic.com