BBVA bets on biometrics and invests more money into a digital identity verification startup

BBVA and technology firm das-Nano are pumping EUR4 million into Veridas, the digital identity verification startup they created in 2017.

BBVA and das-Nano strengthen their alliance with a capital increase in Veridas, a leading company in biometrics and digital identity verification. „The two founding partners have carried out a financing round of four million euros in the company that will serve to continue expanding their business in new markets,” according to the press release.

The company was created in 2017 as a ‘joint venture between BBVA and the Navarran technology firm to develop new, more secure and user-friendly customer identification and authentication systems.

Since its inception, the company has grown rapidly. Today, „it performs millions of cloud-based identity validation operations and has a robust, reliable, and internationally recognized technology,” BBVA said. Its services use self-developed artificial intelligence algorithms and operate in three main areas: document verification, face biometrics and voice biometrics.

Eduardo Azanza, CEO and co-founder of Veridas, stated: “The capital increase is a sign of trust in Veridas from the two partners and a reinforced commitment to the team, the technology, and the company’s vision of becoming one of the world’s leading players in biometrics and digital identity verification”.

Gonzalo Rodríguez, Director of Business Development at BBVA in Spain adds: “Veridas has established itself in a short time as a first-rate technology provider in biometric recognition. Thanks to this alliance, BBVA was the first institution in Spain to allow an account to be opened in a completely digital way just by taking a selfie”.

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Veridas’ technology has been key to driving the adoption of the real time customer enrollment service launched in 2016.

The company is currently operating in Europe and America where it is growing rapidly, with clients in different sectors such as financial services, insurance, telecommunications, transport, and public administration, among others.

Veridas facial biometrics technology has been recognized as one of the best in the world in periodic evaluations carried out by the U.S.´s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an international benchmark for technological standards. In addition, in terms of voice biometrics, its technology was ranked the 2nd best solution in the world in the prestigious international Short-duration Speaker Verification Challenge (SdSV) competition in 2020. This initiative assesses voice recognition technologies in a scenario of very short recordings (3′), in various languages (‘language-independent’) ​​ and with variability in content (‘text-independent’).