Authentication startup in France closes €2M seed round for US expansion

French biometric authentication startup ShareID has closed a €2 million (US$2.14 million) seed round of funding led by a French-American venture fund. The company will use the money to expand its United States operation.

ShareID‘s authentication app prompts the user to send a photo ID to an algorithm for authentication. Then, the app compares the photo on the document to another that is created locally with face biometrics. The local selfie image (technically a video of multiple angles) is not sent online, minimizing its risk of being used for theft or fraud.

Company executives claim their onboarding app authenticates documents correctly 99 percent of the time. Their liveness precision is 99.7 percent, according to ShareID. They maintain that no personal data is stored, and what is collected is processed on-device, making the authentication process decentralized.

The prompt for a photo is built into a client’s business application. The person enrolling signals acceptance of verification or sharing of their photo by smiling. The digital identity, which is linked to the physical ID, can be reused.

Venture firm Newfund led the round. Others participating in the funding were 212 Founders, CDG Invest and industry angels including ShareID CEO Sara Sebti and Tom Kemp and co-founder of access-management company Centrify (now Deliniea), which birthed Idaptive.

The company has raised a total of €2.6 million ($2.8 million) in two rounds, according to business database Crunchbase. A pre-seed round was closed April 2021.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  face biometrics  |  facial authentication  |  France  |  funding  |  ShareID  |  startup