Cork firm Valid8Me gets more than €12m from Grant Thornton

Retail customers can store, share, trace and manage their customer information through Valid8Me.

Valid8Me announced Grant Thornton will invest €12.5m into the Cork businesses as part of a contract. The company said this money from the professional services firm will be used to fund global growth.

“We view the valid8Me platform as complementary to a number of our service lines and specifically addresses the needs of our clients across a number of sectors including financial services, legal, accounting, wealth management and real estate among others,” said Mick McAteer, managing partner of Grant Thornton Ireland.

Valid8Me is a digital identity software company that lets customers and businesses securely store, share and manage their related data while also verifying their identities. When a user sets up a profile on valid8Me, they get a reusable identity that can be verified across any business or industry. 

“The idea that consumers repeatedly share their most sensitive data, often through insecure channels, to prove their identity is archaic. Valid8Me is fundamentally different, we empower consumers to maintain a reusable digital identity that can be used universally across all industries,” said CEO of Valid8Me Patrick Horgan.

Valid8Me lets its users reuse their digital identity which allows businesses to streamline proof of identity and onboarding processes with more control and certainty. This process is also known as Know-Your-Customer (KYC) compliance.

“We deal with an increasing number of clients who are extremely challenged by the resource overhead in complying with KYC regulatory obligations,” said Steve Tennant, head of financial services advisory at Grant Thornton Ireland.

Digital onboarding reduces the likelihood of fraudulent documents and financial crime occurring and has led to Valid8Me supporting over 10,000 different document templates from 248 different countries and territories. Mr Tennant said that Valid8Me has offered "a new way of approaching this compliance", which has led to the interest in the firm from Grant Thornton.

Valid8Me claims it is the only platform that reduces customer onboarding costs by up to 50% and onboarding times by up to 90%, by letting digital identity be streamlined. This enables businesses to maintain and update (KYC) documents.

Valid8Me was launched last year through Horizon8, the European division of Horizon8 US, a global technology services provider. In early 2021, it was decided that Horizon8 Ireland would solely focus on building and growing valid8Me.

Valid8Me currently employs 30 people and plans to grow its staff numbers to 60 by the end of 2023.