Digital ID firm Yoti secures £12.5m debt funding from HSBC

By Gloria Methri

Digital identity firm Yoti has received £12.5 million in debt funding from HSBC, and a further £7.5 million in convertible debt funding from existing shareholders. The £20 million funding will support the company’s continued growth to achieve profitability and beyond.

The latest funding round follows the £10 million invested in Yoti by Lloyds Banking Group earlier this year. The company’s total funding to date now exceeds £166 million; the majority provided by its founders and angel investors since it was founded in 2014.

This funding has enabled Yoti to develop proprietary technologies covering identity verification, age assurance, authentication and eSignatures, including in-house facial age estimation, liveness, and facial recognition AI. The company, founded and headquartered in the UK, offers a range of digital identity solutions that make it safer for people to prove who they are.

Robin Tombs, CEO at Yoti said, “I am delighted to announce this funding round, including £12.5 million from HSBC, which follows another exciting and fast-paced year for Yoti. We are growing quickly and this £20 million funding should comfortably see us through to profitability.”

John Browett, Chair at Yoti added, “It is good to see this last piece of funding in place to see Yoti through to profit. It has world-leading technology that makes great improvements to trust, security and safety in the digital world. It has been fabulous to work with the company as we have gone from start-up to significant and increasing revenues.”

This year, Yoti also launched a new Digital ID app with Lloyds Bank and created Digital ID Connect – the UK’s largest digital identity network provided by the company, along with Post Office and Lloyds Bank. Over four million people in the UK have downloaded one of the Digital ID apps (Yoti ID, Post Office EasyID and Lloyds Bank Smart ID), and the company itself has over 13 million app installs globally.