Easing biometrics implementation draws $12M Series B for Vu, $1.6M Seed round for HelloFlow

Vu Security has raised $12 million in its Series B funding round, and plans to add developer talent to accelerate the growth of its biometric authentication services, TechCrunch reports.

The company’s APIs use biometrics, along with geolocation, behavior analysis and online data to perform digital identity verification and continuous authentication. Vu launched an authentication solution for teleconferencing with voice and face biometrics in late-2020, and joined Microsoft’s passwordless decentralized ID pilot earlier this year.

Vu also recently passed biometric presentation attack detection (PAD) testing from iBeta Quality Assurance, according to a company blog post.

The funding round included participation from Globant, Agrega Partners, NXTP Ventures, Bridge One, the IDB Lab and Telefónica, and brings Vu’s total raised to $20 million. Globant also becomes a Vu distribution partner under the terms of its investment.

Vu is based in Argentina, and was founded by CEO Sebastián Stranieri after a challenging experience helping his grandmother verify her identity to the country’s government.

Its clients are mostly government entities, including in Argentina and Ecuador, but it also serves bank Santander and financial services provider Prisma. The company says it employs more than 150 people, is averaging 85 percent year-over-year growth, with growth over 100 percent forecast for 2022, and has opened offices in New York and Madrid. Further plans include opening offices in Italy, France and the UK, quadrupling its head count in New York, and hiring developers across Europe and the U.S.

HelloFlow scores $1.6M for no-code platform

Financial institution onboarding startup HelloFlow has raised $1.6 million in a Seed funding round to fuel the expansion of its no-code digital identity and further platform development.

Specifically, HelloFlow intends to accelerate product development and expand its platform’s progressive functionalities.

The company uses third parties to perform identity verification, mentioning biometrics providers Onfido, Jumio and IDnow on its website, to provide plug-and-play services for a range of onboarding processes. The idea is to make it easy for companies to digitize, and give them flexibility with a simple and compliant digital client onboarding solution, which the HelloFlow says can be time consuming and expensive to develop.

A single person can implement HelloFlow in a day, as opposed to the months the process sometimes takes, according to the announcement.

HelloFlow was founded in June, 2020, and closed a Pre-seed investment round led by angel investor Susanne Brønnum, who previously served as CEO of Nets Denmark.

The Seed round was led by PreSeed Ventures and Seedcamp, along with angel investors.

“I and our entire team at PreSeed Ventures have been impressed by (founders) Mikkel and Ciprian from the first meeting,” comments Alexander Viterbo-Horten, investment director at PreSeed Ventures prior to the investment. “There is not only a very strong founder market fit due to their relevant experience, especially with Mikkel’s insight from building a bespoke solution for Saxo Bank, but as a team, they move with an incredible speed and continue to prove a high level of execution skill.”

“Using the platform, you can set up a proper, sleek, and compliant onboarding process and share it with the clients, all inside a single day,” states HelloFlow Co-founder and CEO Mikkel Skarnager. “This makes it possible to launch your service in new markets across the world within 10 minutes.”

Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital identity  |  funding  |  HelloFlow  |  identity verification  |  no-code  |  research and development  |  VU Security