Socure Secures Santander Investment

Santander InnoVentures, a FinTech venture capital fund, announced on Wednesday (June 22) that it is making a strategic investment in identity verification platform Socure.

As a real-time digital identity verification solutions provider, Socure uses trusted data from a consumer’s digital footprint — the social biometrics of individuals — to confirm their identity. The technology is typically used by financial institutions to help prevent fraud when customers open a new bank account or when issued credit or debit cards. But it can also be utilized in applications across fraud prevention and compliance to help businesses adhere to anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.

In a statement announcing the investment, Mariano Belinky, managing partner at Santander InnoVentures, said:

“Identity verification is a crucial step in any banking process and is an issue challenging many consumer-facing businesses. There’s a huge opportunity for innovation in this space, in line with the evolution of digital identity and the issues around it, and we believe Socure are at the forefront of it.”

Grupo Santander expressed its desire to utilize partnerships with technology companies across various financial services markets to help accelerate its own digital transformation.

Belinky added that Socure also has enormous potential to help address financial inclusion in emerging markets and will provide Santander InnoVentures with the opportunity to better understand and predict the needs of its customers.

“With this latest funding announcement, we’re extremely excited to continue our work in tackling the issues associated with identity fraud, while continuing to improve access to the financial system for the unbanked and underbanked, whether in established economies or emerging markets,” Sunil Madhu, founder and CEO of Socure, explained.

“With the track record and the global capability of Grupo Santander behind them, we felt Mariano and the team were a perfect fit as a VC partner that can help us grow globally.”