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Image credits: Shufti Pro

Shufti Pro, a London-based identity verification service provider, announced that it has secured $20M (approx €18M) in a Series A funding round led by Updata Partners, a tech-focused growth equity firm.

Fund utilisation

Shufti Pro claims the investment will enable it to accelerate its global expansion, product development and extend the company’s compliance suite.

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Shahid Hanif, founder and CTO of Shufti Pro, says “The funding round was about finding a strategic partner that has the relevant experience and knowledge, which we truly believe we have found. We can now develop more exciting products and solve onboarding and compliance issues faced all over the World.“

How was Shufti Pro born?

Shahid Hanif founded Shufti Pro after a bad experience with an identity verification service provider. 

In 2012, Hanif was working as a developer of a financial institution and wanted to integrate a famous KYC solution of that time as part of a major digitisation project. After multiple failures and delays, the solution was implemented but the company ended up cancelling the whole project and reverted to manual KYC. 

Hanif again encountered another bad experience in 2017 when he had to receive a payment from a digital bank.

Post a couple of bad experiences, he was determined to bridge the gap in the digital identity verification industry. 

“Established on the principles of authenticity, trust, and transparency, Shufti Pro became the first company to offer free trials in the identity verification industry and kept its pricing public,” says Shahid Hanif.

Shufti Pro: What you need to know

Shufti Pro is an identity verification service provider offering KYC, KYB and AML services to help global businesses onboard and manage the risk of legitimate customers. 

Victor Fredung, CEO of Shufti Pro, says, “Our configurable and fully automated platform allows customers to incorporate a frictionless verification process specific to their business objectives and provides the flexibility to address data privacy and security requirements, including the ability to deploy an on-premise solution. We strive to provide the global coverage demanded by borderless organisations.”

The UK company has 5 regional offices and launched 17 different IDV products since its inception in 2017.

At present, the company can verify ID documents globally in 150+ languages and serves customers in 230+ countries and territories. 

Investors

Based out of Washington, Updata provides growth equity and operating expertise to the next generation of technology leaders.

Braden Snyder, Partner at Updata Partners, says, “We were impressed by the technology and commercial progress achieved by a bootstrapped business. Shufti Pro is poised to build on this strong foundation and accelerate growth.”