Online scams and identity theft is a worldwide problem that has just been exacerbated with increased online transactions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In specific, it is estimated that Brazilian companies lose over $41 billion due to fraud every year.

In an attempt to tackle this issue head on, Lincoln Ando and Raphael Melo started idwall in mid-2016. São Paulo-based idwall began as an automated background check option and has actually given that grown into a suite of information and identity validation and danger analysis items. For the customer market, its “MeuID” app is targeted at users who wish to alter the method they identify themselves and share their data.

And now the Brazilian regtech has actually raised $38 million in a Series C round led by Stamina.

GGV Capital, monashees, Canary, Qualcomm Ventures LLC, ONEVC, Peninsula and Norte likewise participated in the financing, bringing its total raised to nearly $50 million.

The business says it has actually grown 1,458% in between 2017 and 2020, with average growth of 144% annually. Its more than 300 customers include 10 unicorns, 2 out of the three biggest banks in Brazil and business such as iFood, Claro, Cielo, Loggi, Ebanx, QuintoAndar and OLX, to name a few.

Fintechs make up a significant part of its client base, and in 2020, the business saw its income from customers in the monetary industry alone climb by 588% compared to 2019.

Idwall uses artificial intelligence and AI to automate the onboarding procedure via its face match, background check, danger analysis, ID recognition and automated optical character recognition (OCR) offerings to help business avoid scams.

The company stated its APIs confirm personal documents and details by searching in public and personal databases”rapidly and pursuant to the compliance guidelines. “Idwall does all this by very first confirming that an ID is genuine. It works to ensure the person utilizing it is really the owner of the ID.

And last but not least, it runs a full background check. It declares it does all this in less than three minutes.”We help them do all these onboarding procedures in a much safer, much better and faster way,”said idwall

co-founder and CEO Ando. Over the years, idwall has generated more than 65 million data reports for its clients, a number that it says surged by 5,000 times between 2017 and 2020. Those reports, it claims, have assisted its clients scale their operations, register more of their own clients and optimize compliance and KYC processes, in addition to lower scams.

Image Credits: idwall In general, the pandemic’s drive to digital led to a massive increase in the variety of digital checking account, mobile payment services and also of companies adjusting to digital platforms and/or expanding their digital operations — leading to a boom in business for idwall.”The

more digitized business become, the more customer expectations grow– and market competition grows more powerful,” Ando stated. “Our objective is to always stay ahead of development in our market, and that’s why we invest a lot in growth and in constructing the best possible team to develop our items.”

Part of that includes using its brand-new capital to recruit more developers, strengthen its existing items and launch brand-new ones. Idwall prepares to increase its headcount from its current 200 to about 300 over the next few months. The company is also taking a look at the possibility of broadening beyond Brazil to all of Latin America.

“Much of the identity recognition and scams problems faced in Brazil are seen in other Latin American countries as well,” Ando stated. “Besides, locations like Mexico and Colombia likewise have extremely ingenious business forging ahead when it comes to identity and technology. We still have a lot to attain in Brazil, but we see a big chance for us to take our mission even further.”

Still, in its home nation, recent regulative modifications in Brazil over the last few years have likewise resulted in a boost in demand for idwall’s offerings.

In addition, Brazil’s documentation databases are extremely siloed, the business states, with each state having its own design for the most common identity document, the RG (“Registro Geral” or “General Pc Registry”). Plus, each resident can be released a various RG file in each state.

“It’s indisputable how much digital onboarding and automated identity recognition procedures are basic for the Latin American market to reach as far as it has the potential to,”Ando said.”The idwall founders are tackling a huge yet underserved issue in Brazil, and have actually led the business through terrific development,” Tung told TechCrunch. Article curated by RJ Shara from Source. RJ Shara is a Bay Area Radio Host (Radio Jockey) who talks about the startup ecosystem – entrepreneurs, investments, policies and more on her show The Silicon Dreams. The show streams on Radio Zindagi 1170AM on Mondays from 3.30 PM to 4 PM.