Munich, Luxem­bourg — IDnow, a leading provi­der of Iden­tity Veri­fi­ca­tion-as-a-Service solu­ti­ons, recei­ves 15 million in growth funding from the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank. The funds will be used for IDnow’s rese­arch, deve­lo­p­ment and inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion. The finan­cing of the Bank of the EU is made possi­ble by the Invest­ment Plan for Europe.

The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) is awar­ding EUR 15 million in growth finan­cing to the German iden­tity veri­fi­ca­tion plat­form IDnow. IDnow specia­li­zes in secure remote auto and video iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and elec­tro­nic signa­tures. Compa­nies can thus acquire custo­mers and carry out tran­sac­tions more quickly and easily without viola­ting “Know Your Custo­mer” and money laun­de­ring regu­la­ti­ons. The invest­ment will prima­rily go towards IDnow’s rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment acti­vi­ties and inter­na­tio­nal expansion.

The finan­cing falls under the Euro­pean Growth Finance Faci­lity (EGFF), made possi­ble by the guaran­tee of the Euro­pean Fund for Stra­te­gic Invest­ments (EFSI). EGFF is desi­gned to fill a gap in quasi-equity finan­cing in Europe. This gap is caused by struc­tu­ral market fail­ures in provi­ding suita­ble venture capi­tal to compa­nies that have alre­ady recei­ved venture capi­tal and are now in a later stage. Euro­pean small, medium and mid-cap compa­nies often suffer from a syste­mic shortage of non-dilu­tive large-scale finan­cing for growth invest­ments in property, plant and equip­ment and intan­gi­ble assets. The bene­fit of the EFSI in this case is that it signi­fi­cantly impro­ves the bank’s risk-bearing capacity.

The EFSI is the main pillar of the Invest­ment Plan for Europe, in which the EIB and the Euro­pean Commis­sion work toge­ther as stra­te­gic part­ners. With its loans, the EIB is helping to make the Euro­pean economy more compe­ti­tive. In addi­tion, there is the Euro­pean Invest­ment Advi­sory Hub (EIAH), which helps public and private project promo­ters struc­ture invest­ment projects in a more profes­sio­nal manner.

Ambroise Fayolle, EIB Vice-Presi­dent over­see­ing EFSI as well as the Bank’s opera­ti­ons in Germany, said: “IDnow, which is recei­ving an EIB loan for the first time, has to invest signi­fi­cantly in its rese­arch, deve­lo­p­ment and commer­cia­liza­tion acti­vi­ties. This loan is an excel­lent exam­ple of how the EU’s bank can use the Invest­ment Plan for Europe to foster inno­va­tion, espe­ci­ally in sensi­tive areas such as the fight against money laun­de­ring and terro­rist finan­cing, as well as cyber­se­cu­rity, which are of great stra­te­gic importance to the EU and its economy.”

Euro­pean Commis­sio­ner for Econo­mic Affairs Paolo Genti­loni said: “As more and more of our inter­ac­tions take place online, it is more important than ever that we streng­then data secu­rity and fraud preven­tion. It is right that the Invest­ment Plan for Europe contri­bu­tes to these efforts. This support will enable the German plat­form IDnow to expand its services for digi­tal iden­tity veri­fi­ca­tion of custo­mers and busi­ness part­ners. We are inves­t­ing in a secure busi­ness envi­ron­ment online, one of the goals of our digi­tal finance strategy.”

IDnow CFO Joe Lich­ten­ber­ger said, “Covid-19 has noti­ce­ably boos­ted demand for digi­tal services, and thus for our ‘veri­fi­ca­tion as-a-service’ solu­tion, across various indus­tries and geogra­phies. EIB’s flexi­ble finan­cing helps us to invest faster in the deve­lo­p­ment of the plat­form and take advan­tage of busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. The EIB is the ideal part­ner for us to estab­lish oursel­ves as a leading Euro­pean iden­tity veri­fi­ca­tion provider.”

About IDnow

With its Iden­tity Veri­fi­ca­tion as a Service (IVaaS) plat­form, IDnow is on a mission to make the connec­ted world a safer place. IDnow’s unma­ni­pulable iden­tity veri­fi­ca­tion is used in all indus­tries where compa­nies conduct online custo­mer inter­ac­tions that require the highest level of secu­rity. IDnow tech­no­logy uses arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to ensure that all secu­rity features are present on an ID docu­ment and can ther­e­fore relia­bly detect coun­ter­feit docu­ments. Poten­ti­ally, the iden­ti­ties of more than 7 billion custo­mers from 193 diffe­rent count­ries can be verified.
IDnow covers a wide range of use cases both in regu­la­ted indus­tries in Europe and for comple­tely new digi­tal busi­ness models world­wide. Through the plat­form, iden­tity flow can be custo­mi­zed on a case-by-case basis to meet regio­nal, legal and busi­ness requirements.
IDnow is supported by venture capi­tal inves­tors Corsair Capi­tal, BayBG, Seven­ture Part­ner, G+D Ventures and a consor­tium of renow­ned busi­ness angels. Its more than 250 custo­mers include leading inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies from various indus­tries such as Bank of Scot­land, BNP Pari­bas, Commerz­bank, even­tim, Raisin (Welt­spa­ren), Sixt, sola­ris­Bank, Tele­fó­nica Deutsch­land, UBS and Western Union, as well as fintechs such as Fidor, N26, smava and wefox.

The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank

The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) is the long-term lending insti­tu­tion of the Euro­pean Union. Its share­hol­ders are the member states of the EU. The EIB lends long-term funds to sound projects that meet EU objectives.

The invest­ment offen­sive for Europe

The Invest­ment Plan for Europe aims to boost invest­ment in Europe and thus create jobs. Through guaran­tees from the Euro­pean Fund for Stra­te­gic Invest­ments (EFSI), the EIB and the EIF are able to assume a larger share of the project risk, making it easier for private finan­ciers to also parti­ci­pate in the projects. The projects and agree­ments appro­ved so far for EFSI-guaran­teed finan­cing are expec­ted to mobi­lize €535.4 billion in invest­ments and bene­fit over 1.4 million start-ups and small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses across all EU countries.