Chekk pulls in another investor to expand ID verification, KYC reach

Chekk says Standard Chartered Bank has added to the digital identity and KYC firm’s apparently still-open multimillion-dollar financing round, which was announced in June.

Standard has not disclosed its investment. Finance giant HSBC led with participation from venture firm SOSV.

Standard is one of Chekk’s clients and executives expect to see the Hong Kong startup expand product development, teams and client base globally.

Chekk CEO Pascal Nizri says his products are “rapidly becoming a standard across multiple [Standard] business units.” They also being adopted by other financial institutions and fintechs around the world, Nizri says.

The Chekk platform aggregates data from multiple sources, ranging from live government and corporate registries to global commercial data partners, from anti-money laundering lists to environmental, social and governance data.

The information is fed into a modular system of capabilities and channels, enabling organizations (mainly financial services providers) to manage relationships with businesses and individual clients.

“While several companies claim to optimize customer onboarding in banking, none comes close to Chekk, with real-time data collection delivering a digital advantage across multiple stakeholders,” says Alex Manson, head of corporate venture firm SC Ventures.

SC Ventures is an “established partner” of Chekk’s. It also is a unit of Standard, and has invested in a number of digital identity firms, including Secret Double Octopus.

ID verification and KYC markets to grow

The Chekk investment comes at a time of substantial growth for both ID verification and KYC markets.

According to a recent report by Straits Research, the global identity verification market was valued at $8.43 billion in 2021. It is predicted to reach $2.94 billion by 2030, increasing at a compound annual growth rate of 16.35 percent from 2022 to 2030.

The research also suggests that North America dominated the market in 2021 with a revenue share greater than 41 percent.

A separate report on ReportLinker suggests the KYC global market will expand at a compounded rate of 24.5 percent in 2030, rising from $295.15 million in 2020 to $1.6 billion in 2030.

Among the main factors driving this growth is reduced paperwork and less completion time for KYC formalities online in real-time. Another is the increasing adoption of digital currency by government regulators to eliminate anonymity in transactions and facilitate the transfers of cross-border funds.

A number of companies focusing on KYC technologies (often in conjunction with digital ID) have recently entered new partnerships, including Ariadnext, iDenfy and Acuant.

Article Topics

AML  |  Chekk  |  digital identity  |  funding  |  identity verification  |  investment  |  KYC  |  onboarding