Passbase receives $13.5 million

The money comes from two financing rounds. One of them was announced beforehand, the other came as a surprise.

The start-up Passbase, based in Berlin and New York, has secured 13.5 million US dollars. Ten million US dollars came from a previously announced Series A round. US$3.5 million was raised in an unannounced additional funding round. Costanoa Ventures, Lakestar, Eniac Ventures and Cowboy Ventures invested. The startup offers an infrastructure that can be used to verify the identity of customers.

Passbase plans to use the fresh capital to grow its product suite. It also wants to simplify policy management for cryptocurrency firms, fintechs and other companies that use Passbase for their identity verification. It says this is necessary because global compliance requirements are constantly changing. "Passbase offers a novel approach to solving this critical problem - in a market with almost unlimited demand," said founder of investor Costanoa Ventures Greg Sands.

Passbase was founded in 2018. The company has developed identity verification infrastructure to help businesses meet their KYC requirements in a privacy-centric and user-centric way, among other things. KYC means "know your customer" and refers to the legitimacy verification that is mandatory for credit institutions and the like. This is intended to prevent money laundering.