OCR Labs has announced a $30 million Series B round led by New York-based Equable Capital to expand its team in North America and EMEA. OCR Labs is headquartered in London.
Viewed as a technology leader in the digital identity verification space, OCR Labs solves major challenges including identity fraud and regulatory compliance, using its proprietary technology. The end-to-end solution supports Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations and improves customer identity verification while reducing fraud.
OCR Labs was originally founded in 2016 by Matthew Adams and Daniel Aiello and launched its first product in 2018. Adams and Aiello wanted to streamline customer onboarding whilst protecting organisations against the increasing risk of fraud and identity theft.
OCR Labs is the only provider with unique deep learning engines that allows it to control the entire identity verification flow without human intervention. The founders invested in developing this technology after identifying issues in the market that included the use of document templates and higher error rates with different skin tones from existing solutions.
Since announcing its Series A last year, OCR Labs has continued to scale into the UK and European markets. As part of its Series B, it is bolstering its international growth with a new office in North America, a direct sales force, and hiring a global Chief Revenue Officer. OCR Labs has raised $46M through its combined Series A and B. Previous investors include OYAK and Halkin Ventures.
John Myers, CEO of OCR Labs commented, “2021 was an incredible year for OCR Labs, with continued validation from customers who have chosen us as their provider for online digital identity verification. This investment provides us with the capital to continue our growth while bringing a value-added investor on to our board. Our vision remains unchanged: we strive to be the leading technology provider of digital identity verification, globally. The market opportunity continues to grow, and with our expansion in the US, and investment in our global sales effort, we’re in a phenomenal position to grow our customer base.“
A new study has found that revenue for digital identity vendors will exceed $53Bn globally by 2026, doubling from $26 billion in 20211. The past year has seen OCR Labs grow its customer base substantially, with a 500 percent increase in new clients and doubling its growth rate every year in the last three years.
OCR Labs supports clients across industries including financial services, government, telco, crypto and a variety of platform-based businesses, including SaaS providers. Customers include the Australian Government, Vodafone, ZIP and BMW.
Alain Meier, Co-Founder and CEO of Cognito said “OCR Labs has been one of Cognito's preferred partners for ID document verification. The company is extremely nimble, and their products help to verify users that other systems struggle with. We have loved working with OCR Labs and look forward to growing with them after their Series B.”
OCR Labs’ fully automated solution removes the need for human intervention, speeding up identity verification and improving accuracy while ensuring customers have a smooth and seamless identity verification experience. Its proprietary technology is an accredited, biometric solution that combines optical character recognition (OCR), document fraud assessment, liveness detection, video fraud assessment, and face matching.
Jonathan Smidt, Founder of Equable Capital said, “Our investment in OCR Labs was the culmination of a lot of work to find the leading provider of identity verification using identity documents and facial matching. OCR Labs’ solution has the highest accuracy and lowest error rates while protecting customer data and privacy and meeting the highest third-party testing and accreditations standards.”
Smidt continued, “Matt Adams and Daniel Aiello have developed the leading technology for online digital identity verification that has been validated through OCR Lab’s adoption by the leading financial institutions, governments and more, globally. We’re excited to support the team in their international growth, particularly as they increase their focus on the US. ”
Speaking on the investment and relationship with Equable Capital, John Myers, added, “We are extremely appreciative of our original investors Halkin Ventures and OYAK for their support and faith and we are already seeing the impact Equable Capital is having on OCR Labs by bringing Jonathan’s expertise operating in both the US and European markets as well as his deep set of relationships across a broad set of industries and potential customers. We are excited to have Equable as an investor and partner as we expand in North America.”