A.ID, a platform for identity and compliance that focuses on high-risk clients has closed a preseed investment round of $500,000 with angel investors, including former employees from RobinHood and Square.
According to the startup, it addresses a market traditional Fintech companies and banks can't deal with: the increase in apparently risky customers who simply deal in products that are deemed dangerous. One example is the 67% annual growth in legal cannabis and 46% in crypto. The unbanked and underbanked population continues to grow, yet existing financial institutions are unable to serve these rapidly expanding markets.
Ekaterina Romanovskaya (a third-time entrepreneur who has experience in finance and consumer tech) and Justinas Kaminskas (who launched compliance products in Europe), founded A.ID, a B2B2C platform.
Romanovskaya stated: Our goal is to build trust. End-users trust companies to handle their sensitive data, and companies trust end-users to not engage in illegal activity. This trust is vital and is eagerly awaited everywhere.
A.ID claims its solution allows customers to verify their identities and onboard them. It also monitors their payments and creates and solves compliance cases. It can be integrated via API (application programming Interface) or as a web-based application or SDK.
It currently counts Arival, an emerging digital bank, and Clos as a social network for creators to verify user authenticity.
In 2017, I moved permanently to the USA. However, I had difficulty getting the right attention from VCs. I was a female founder, immigrant founder and a founder with no technical knowledge. My company, which I started by myself, grew organically up until the COVID-19 pandemic. I used the 2020 lockdown for data science and coding, and eventually became a data engineer. In September 2020 I founded A.ID, Romanovskaya told TechCrunch.
Romanovskaya was a Twitter celebrity Russia after she co-founded a satirical account that criticizes the Kremlin. It had 2M users at its peak. She co-founded Nimb in 2016, a trendy smart ring that has a panic button and is geared towards women.
A.ID headquarters is located in Los Angeles, California. With an office in Lithuania, the European branch is active in the EU.
