dotfile is a new startup backed by eFounders which has just raised a round of funding of 2,7 million dollars (2,5 million euros) to help companies verify users with a single application programming interface (API).
Serena leads the financing round through her V13 Invest fund (backed by FDJ). Kima Ventures, Pareto Holdings, Super Capital, Upscalers, Polymatter Ventures, and various street investors are also participating in the round.
If you've talked to fintech startup founders, they've probably told you that there are dozens of small and large companies working on identity verification processes. The reason why there are so many players in this industry is that identity verification is an important process to comply with anti-money laundering (AML) and 'know-your-customer' (KYC) regulation.
As a consumer, you may have encountered these verification systems while trying to send money on a peer-to-peer payment app, selling an expensive item at a marketplace, or renting a car. These services ask you to scan your ID, take a selfie video, connect to your bank account, send documents, etc.
Rather than create another identity, risk and fraud management API with limited industry and geographic coverage, Dotfile wants to add dozens of KYC and KYB services so that companies can mix and match APIs and data sources based on their needs and your customer profiles. .
This way, fintech startups just getting started don't have to compare multiple products, negotiate contracts with each vendor, and manually build integrations with each API. Dotfile also tries to unify these services and provides an embeddable verification interface. Alternatively, developers can use the Dotfile API directly.
Similarly, Dotfile helps you centralize your verification data on a single backend. If a user sends you an email because she received an error trying to verify her identity, the person in charge of compliance can easily see where the process failed.
Dotfile also provides a workflow builder, which allows you to create if-then-else rules to cover all sorts of scenarios. For example, if a customer tries to verify her business, there could be different processes if it is a French company, a European company or a non-European company.
The startup is still relatively new, having been created in 2021. But it could be particularly interesting for fintech startups, as Dotfile helps you ship a fintech product more quickly. In a way, it acts as an abstraction layer so that entrepreneurs can focus on different things.
