Irish identity verification start-up ID-Pal launches in UK

11 May 2022

From left: ID-Pal COO Simon Montgomery, CEO Colum Lyons, CTO Rob O’Farrell, CBO James O’Toole, and CMO Shelley McKinney. Image: Conor Healy/Picture It Photography

ID-Pal raised €1m in a funding round led by Act Venture Capital and private investors back in 2020 to accelerate its global expansion.

Dublin-based identity verification start-up ID-Pal has today (11 May) announced its launch in the UK to help more companies there combat fraud with its tech.

The Irish company already provides businesses in Ireland, the UK, the US and Europe with remote identity and address verification using biometric, facial matching, liveness testing, address verification and document checks.

“We’re looking forward to officially launching in the UK market and empowering more businesses with simple, secure convenient identity verification for their business and their customers, ” said co-founder and CEO Colum Lyons.

In 2020, ID-Pal raised €1m in a funding round led by Act Venture Capital and other private investors to accelerate its global expansion. In the past two years, the business has benefitted from companies’ mass shift to online operations.

ID-Pal’s clients include large enterprises such as Grant Thornton and Zurich International, as well as SMEs such as UK Adviser and Trust My Travel.

The start-up’s tech covers more than 6,000 ID documents across 200 countries and jurisdictions, and it aims to make customer onboarding easier for clients. It is available off the shelf or as an API/SDK for developers. ID-Pal said its tech is also GDPR compliant and can be configured for any jurisdiction or legal requirement in any language.

Lyons said that the way in which identity verification has been done historically is “just not sustainable” in a digital-first mobile-ready world.

“Verifying identity documents manually is inefficient and insecure, and the risk of data flight and simple human error can make businesses vulnerable to fraud,” he added.

“Our unique blend of ID checks, all powered by a completely technology-first process, means multi-layered verification takes place on any ID document in real time. Using AI and machine-learning offers greater accuracy in correctly classifying a document and reduces the margin for error and need for manual intervention.”

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Blathnaid O’Dea was a Careers reporter at Silicon Republic until 2024.

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