Lloyds Banking Group has heavily invested £10 million in digital identity to create safer customer experiences onboarding, authenticating and making transactions where fraud remains a top challenge.
Digital identity company Yoti received the tender and this latest funding round which follows key milestones since it was launched back in November 2017, including a variety of partnerships with Heathrow Airport – to expand biometric safe travel for passengers – installing age verification self-service checkouts at NCR and Yubo and Facebook – implementing age assurance to safeguard young people online.
The investment supports the advancement of innovative technology to keep people’s financial assets and livelihoods safe through the online space, tackle increasingly prevalent types of identity fraud, and give more control to account holders over their personal data.
Kirsty Rutter, FinTech Investment Director at Lloyds Banking Group, said:
“We are thrilled to be supporting Yoti and their experienced, passionate team with their work to further protect people online, through developing and growing digital identity solutions.
We know how important fintechs and technology partners are for delivering better outcomes for our customers and this investment represents another step forward in our plans to strengthen the UK’s financial ecosystem and is a crucial part of how we help Britain prosper.”
Yoti offer a range of digital identity solutions but more recently has struck partnerships and deals using its age estimation technology and patent applications around biometric liveness authentication, anti-spoofing to penetrate in particular the retail market – uphold purchase laws on alcohol and age-restricted products – and partnership up with social media platforms,.
Yoti also rapidly climbed in popularity to be selected by the Government of Jersey to be its digital identity provider.
Breaking into the financial services, the investment will launch a reusable digital identity proposition leveraging Yoti’s existing solutions, which includes a free digital ID app to enable mobile customers to privately, securely and seamlessly prove their identity when they authenticate or onboard.
Robin Tombs, CEO at Yoti commented in relation to the partnership:
“The combination of their expertise in financial services and our digital identity solutions will bring security to even more businesses, people and communities. We will make it easier and safer for individuals to prove who they are and enable businesses to have more trust and confidence in the identity of their customers.”
The investment in Yoti is Lloyds Banking Group’s second investment of 2023, following a successful round of investments in 2022. These investments are headed up by the Group’s recently formed Fintech Investment team, which focuses on identifying and exploring opportunities for investment into fintech at Seed to Series B.
