Santander's fintech venture capital fund has joined a $13.9 million Series B funding round for New York-based digital identity startup Socure.
This is the second tranche of money that Santander InnoVentures has put into Socure following an investment last summer. Flint Capital, Work-Bench and Two Sigma Ventures joined Santander in the latest round
Socure taps data from the digital footprint of consumers, including social media, to confirm the identity of new account applicants in real-time. The firm counts a top five US bank and a top five global money transfer provider among its many FS industry clients.
Mariano Belinky, managing partner, Santander InnoVentures, says: "At Santander, we make investments where we spot an opportunity that can add value to banking customers. Identity verification is a crucial step in any banking process and Socure is at the forefront of innovation in this space.
"There is enormous potential for tackling the issue of financial inclusion, with the help of Socure, where citizens may be excluded from the banking system simply because they lack traditional credit records used for identity verification."
With a $200 million pot to invest, Santander Innoventure has been busy building up its portfolio in recent months, adding Pixoneye, Curve and Gridspace to the likes of iZettle, MyCheck, Cyanogen, Ripple, Digital Asset Holdings, Elliptic, Kabbage and SigFig.