Digital bank Atom raises £25m, developing new biometric technologies

UK digital bank Atom announced it has received from a number of high profile investors, including venture capitalist Jon Moulton, Goldman Sachs banker Jim O’Neill and entrepreneur Sir Peter Vardy, according to a report by City A.M..

Their contributions bring Atom’s total equity invested so far to £25 million, with the largest new shareholder being Neil Woodford’s CF Woodford Equity Income.

Atom will use a portion of the funds toward developing new biometric technologies.

“We are putting massive investment into doing things we think are really innovative,” said Atom founder Anthony Thomson. “This is principally on customer identification and the use of biometrics – fingerprints, voice, facial recognition, iris recognition.”

The digital bank is expected to be given full authorization from the regulators in early- to mid-2015, at which point Atom will launch an additional fundraising round to raise the necessary regulatory capital to operate.

Atom said it plans on offering a full retail banking service digitally through the use of mobile apps.

Article Topics

Atom  |  banking  |  biometrics  |  investment