valid8Me eyes expansion with €12.5m investment

Launched in 2021, valid8Me, the digital identity SAAS platform has announced that Grant Thornton Ireland are investing 12.5million euros in the company. Valid8Me allows both individuals and corporations to securely store, share and manage their key Know-Your-Customer related data.

Valid8Me pioneered and champions reusable digital identity, helping 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 joined up thinking resulting in businesses spending a disproportionate amount of budget and time on manually validating, updating and storing documents. The average bank, for example, spends 60 million dollars per year on Know-Your-Customer compliance.

Valid8Me’s platform offers a significantly enhanced proof of identity and onboarding experience:

• Valid8Me is confident that it is the only platform that reduces customer onboarding costs by up-to 50% and onboarding times by up to 90%, by using reusable digital identity vaults that simplifies the burden of sourcing, maintaining and updating Know-Your-Customer documents for businesses.

• Valid8Me reduces risk and exposure for businesses around data privacy by removing the overhead of handling sensitive data via its reusable digital identity vault model.

• Once set up with a profile on valid8Me, customers have a reusable identity that can be instantly verified across any business or industry.

• Digital onboarding reduces the likelihood of fraudulent documents and financial crime occurring.

• The platform supports over 10,000 different document templates from 248 different countries and territories.

Patrick Horgan, CEO of valid8Me; “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”

Adding, “This investment from Grant Thornton Ireland, combined with their global reach and multisector expertise,  will act as a transformational partner in accelerating valid8Me’s ambitious high-growth strategy. Grant Thornton truly understands valid8Me’s vision to become the universal defacto standard for digital identity  globally.”

Speaking about the investment, 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 said; “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.”

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