Payfone land $24m in funding plus partnership with TransUnion

Payfone, digital identity authentication solution providers, has reported the closing of a $24 million funding round – led by information solutions firm TransUnion.

Payfone also announced that TransUnion have named the firm its primary partner for regulated identity verification information.

TransUnion’s investment in Payfone acts as a representation of a new strategic partnership that will leverage the two companies’ “complementary missions and capabilities to accelerate the global digital economy.”

As part of the funding round, Geoff Miller (senior vice president of global fraud and identity solutions, TransUnion) will join Payfone’s Board of Directors.

Other participants in the funding came from existing investors including: Synchrony, MassMutual Ventures and Wellington Management LLP.

Miller said that Payfone bring “incredible value” to the fight against fraud prevention and expressed his happiness in continuing to work with the firm, a relationship that initially started in 2017.

He explained: “Within this new strategic partnership, we anticipate supporting Payfone’s expansion to new markets and looking at other uses of their products throughout our organization.

“We are both committed to protecting consumers, focusing on data privacy and building trust with our customers, and the combination of our solutions will create a better, more seamless experience for everyone.”

TransUnion said it will “enhance” its existing IDVision with iovation suite of products by integrating Payfone’s Trust Platform and Trust Score to its solution.

“The fear of identity fraud and cyberattacks holds the digital economy back from its full potential,” said Rodger Desai, CEO of Payfone. “For example, in lending, it’s striking that today five times more loan applications are approved in-person than on-line, despite credit worthiness.”

“With our partnership with TransUnion, we can now leverage TransUnion’s footprint of more than 30 countries to help expand our Trust Score™ around the globe, allowing billions of additional consumers to safely access digital services.”

In March, Payfone announced the next phase of their ‘Zero-Knowledge’ architecture, which enables identity verification partners (such as mobile network operators) to verify consumer and business identities without consumer information being passed, stored, or aggregated.