Passbase Raises $13.5M to Bring KYC to Crypto

After 8x revenue growth in 2021, Passbase is expanding its product suite to help businesses manage complex, international compliance requirements

NEW YORK & BERLIN–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Passbase, the identity verification infrastructure company, today announced $10M in Series A, plus a previously unannounced $3.5M Seed-2. The round was led by Costanoa Ventures, with participation from Lakestar, Eniac Ventures, and Cowboy Ventures. The startup will use this capital infusion to scale their product suite and simplify policy management for cryptocurrency, fintech and other businesses using Passbase for identity verification services to meet rapidly changing global compliance requirements.

In the last year, Passbase has grown revenue 8x by helping companies solve their digital identity verification challenges in a compliant, privacy-oriented, and user-centric way. Their intuitive verification flow and back office compliance tooling solves organizations’ regulatory needs for AML, KYC, and age restrictions, while enabling teams to manage automated and branded verification flows across the globe. Their developer-first product can be integrated in as little as 30 minutes and covers over 6,000 IDs across 190 countries and 15 languages.

The global identity verification market is expected to grow to $21.9 billion by 2026 at a 37.29% CAGR, according to a recent report by Market Research Future that highlights the increasing importance of digital verification in the wake of COVID-19. Regulatory crackdowns in major markets are expected to further fuel the need for industry-specific and geography-specific KYC solutions. For example, in the crypto sector alone there has been a wave of regulatory updates, such as the FATF Travel Rule, FinCEN’s proposal to regulate cryptocurrency with KYC checks, and the EU’s 6th AMLD.

“Passbase brings a novel approach to solving the critical problem in a market where there is almost unlimited demand,” said Greg Sands of Costanoa Ventures. “The team’s technical prowess combined with their impressive progress really sets them apart.”

With this latest round of funding, Passbase will scale its team and operations and build the first robust policy and workflow manager to sit on top of its identity verification service. This feature will help scaling companies keep up with increasingly complex regulations and enter new markets and countries faster. Passbase’s new industry-specific policy templates, combined with its existing privacy-centric infrastructure, will lighten the burden on businesses as they navigate compliance, security, and privacy across the globe.

Passbase was developed as a pivot from the company’s origins as a cryptocurrency wallet, Coinance. It’s why the need for digital identity as a service for crypto and fintech is ingrained in the company’s DNA. “We built Passbase to solve our own problem back in 2018 to allow users to manage their digital identities across different cryptocurrency platforms in a compliant way,” says Dave McGibbon, CEO and co-founder of Passbase. “This round of funding brings us one step closer to being the trusted identity solution for web3 companies like Coinance. This is just the beginning for us as we pursue our vision of becoming a digital identity infrastructure that enables web3 companies to stay compliant and give control of digital identity back to individuals.”

About Passbase

Passbase provides identity verification infrastructure that helps companies solve their KYC needs in a compliant, privacy-oriented and user-centric way. Its developer-friendly, highly customizable tools and flexible pricing allow companies to incorporate ID verification, AML compliance, and age verification into their products. By building a trust infrastructure for the internet, Passbase keeps businesses compliant and secure, and end users safe.

Contacts

For press inquiries, please contact Dave McGibbon at media@passbase.com.