Business identity startup Duna raises $12M

European business identity startup Duna has announced a 10.7 million euro (US$12.1 million) seed round led by Index Ventures.

The Netherlands-based company is betting on the rise of the Know Your Customer (KYC), Know Your Business (KYB) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) compliance industry and plans to use the new investment to expand its network across Europe and beyond. Its long-term ambition, however, is to build a shareable business identity similar to a digital passport for companies, according to the firm.

“We’re building a future where businesses do have digital passports – so businesses can identify themselves instantly, securely and universally,” says David Schreiber, Duna’s co-founder.

The funding comes amid increased calls across the world to establish legal entity identifiers (LEIs) to help ease AML and other compliance processes. One of the most significant moves in the business identities space is the European business wallet, which is being built as part of the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet initiative.

Schreiber and his partner, Duco van Lanschot, both former Stripe employees, say that they were partly inspired to start the company by the length of time it took for them to open a bank account for their business and start trading market funds – three months in total.

“We think that the internet is missing the core primitives for identity, and this is what we set out to build, starting with identity for businesses,” Schreiber said at an online event held on LinkedIn on Thursday.

According to its website, Duna promises approximately 10 times faster onboarding. Its onboarding platform includes multiple verification modes, including ID document verification, biometric verification, bank account verification, electronic signatures, address verification and others. The company also provides a data platform for third-party KYC data integration, automated compliance workflows and more. Among its listed partners are Onfido, IDnow, Fourthline, LexisNexis and more.

The company’s clients include U.S. fintech Plaid, Spanish e-commerce payment firm Sequra, German financial services company Moss and Dutch companies such as online retailer Bol, payment company Adyen and Brand New Day Bank. A third of the company is held by a non-profit called the Duna Foundation.

Aside from Index Ventures, Puzzle Ventures also participated in Duna’s funding round, as did former and current executives from Snowflake, Adyen, Stripe and Notion.

Article Topics

AML  |  Duna  |  European Business Wallet  |  funding  |  identity verification  |  KYB  |  KYC  |  Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)