Taylor Wessing has advised its new client Onfido - one of the UK’s leading identity verification providers - on its $30m series C round financing led by Crane Ventures with support from Microsoft Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Idinvest and Wellington Partners and other investors.

Onfido helps millions of people access a host of online platforms - such as Square, Zipcar and Revolut - with just a selfie and a photo of an identity document.  Onfido’s machine learning technology enables companies to automate checks on over 600 document types, spanning 192 countries, detecting anomalies automatically while using human experts to verify outliers. This enables high-growth companies to rely on Onfido’s identity verification technology as they scale, seamlessly on-boarding more customers while reducing the risk of fraud.

This new funding round will enable Onfido’s growth in international markets and new industries, as well as further R&D in machine learning technology.

This deal follows other recent high profile technology deals that Taylor Wessing has worked on including advising:

    Farfetch on its US$397m investment by, and strategic partnership with, e-commerce giant JD.com
    Outfit7 Investments on its ground-breaking sale for US$1bn to a consortium of investors from Asia
    Supercell on the acquisition of a majority interest in Space Ape Games for US$56m
    Magic Pony on its US$150m sale to Twitter.

Husayn Kassai, CEO and co-founder of Onfido said:  “Angus and the Corporate Technology team at Taylor Wessing provided us with sharp, commercially-savvy legal advice on a real time basis. They focused relentlessly on achieving the right result for us and we are delighted that they partnered with us so effectively. We look forward to further embedding our relationship with Taylor Wessing as our business continues to develop.“

Angus Miln, Corporate Technology partner at Taylor Wessing added:  “We aim to work with the most exciting high-growth technology businesses in the market so are delighted to be collaborating with Onfido, which is one of the hottest companies out there right now. They have a super exciting business that is facilitating disruption across multiple sectors. It was a pleasure to work with Husayn and his team.“

The Taylor Wessing team was led by partner Angus Miln with support from Corporate Technology associate Adam Thatcher, as well as a team of specialists in other areas across the firm.