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FPAI Member Story: New Company

Identity Verification. Made Simple. ID-Pal enables businesses to verify the identity and address of customers simply, securely and conveniently in real-time.

An award-winning, RegTech 100 listed and ISO 27001 Certified company, ID-Pal’s mission is to make it as simple as possible for businesses to establish and maintain trust with their customers. The company was founded by industry practitioners who grew frustrated with the barrier that identity verification was creating in terms of doing business with clients.

Since being founded in 2016, ID-Pal’s vision and strategy has remained consistent with its guiding principle of delivering a simple, secure and convenient identity verification solution that enables businesses to ensure that their customers are exactly who they say they are.

L to R – Colum Lyons (CEO), Shelley McKinney (CMO), James O’Toole (CBO), Simon Montgomery (COO) Robert O’Farrell (CTO)

Regulation and Digitisation

Financial Service providers are required by Anti-money Laundering regulation, to verify that their customers are who they say they are prior to engaging in commercial activities. This process, referred to as Know Your Customer (KYC), is predominantly a paper-based, manual process that is highly susceptible to fraud and human error. In addition, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) introduces further complexity and risk for businesses managing their customers’ personal information.


This ever-increasing burden of regulatory compliance coupled with the shift towards digitization of the customer onboarding experience makes it critical that businesses have access to an identity verification solution that blends industry-leading technology and robust compliance with a seamless user experience.

The ID-Pal Solution

The ID-Pal platform enables businesses to verify their customers’ identity and address across any channel or jurisdiction simply, securely and conveniently in real-time. The solution is simple to use, easy to integrate and instantly customisable to the specific needs of any business.

Unique to the market, ID-Pal blends bio-metric, document and database checks to provide businesses with robust fraud protection and maximise customer conversion rates. The solution can be branded for businesses in seconds, configured in minutes and fully integrated within a day. It is the most flexible solution available and moulds to the needs of any business, big or small. This blend of best-of-breed technologies, packaged with a seamless user experience delivers the best results on the market with 93.5% of documents being correctly categorised.

The ID-Pal Solution

The ID-Pal solution uses advanced mobile technologies that allow customers to seamlessly capture and securely transmit their personal information (proof of identity & address) to the business’s ID-Pal web portal. In the portal the ID&V submission is thoroughly verified and authenticated using a suite of industry-leading technologies that include:

Liveness Check (both Passive and Active) 
Motion detection, light and shade analysis and facial gesture recognition checks are performed to ensure that the person making the submission is a real-life person as opposed to a photo of a photo. The ID-Pal software can detect and stop all known presentation attacks.

Facial Comparison
50-point biometric profile is then captured and compared to the person on the identity document to perform a facial comparison check.

Document Verification 
Up to 75-point check is performed, including machine readable zone check, photo substitution, pixilation, pattern continuity and a suite of other algorithmic checks to ensure that the identity document hasn’t been tampered with or forged in any way.

Address E-Verification 
database checks are performed as an additional layer of identity and address verification.

ID-Pal Clients and Partners

ID-Pal’s global presence is strengthening daily, with strategic partners such as Experian, HID Global and KYC Global Technologies, as well as integration partners that include Salesforce and Temenos. These partnerships have enabled ID-Pal to amplify its reach into broader markets and jurisdictions.

ID-Pal’s clients include AIB Merchant Services, Elavon, Fexco, One4All and Sherpa Technologies.

The ID-Pal Journey

Since its inception, ID-Pal has been gaining momentum. From its early days ID-Pal has been supported by Enterprise Ireland and Jobs Ohio (USA), along with both private and Venture Capitalist Investors. The Guinness Enterprise Centre and The Bank of Ireland Innovation Programme also provided office spaces, before the company established their current location in Dublin’s technology district.

ID-Pal is now used in over 43 countries with clients ranging in size from SMEs to large multi-national corporates. In just the past 12 months the company has doubled not only its customer acquisition numbers, but its staff numbers as well.

Company Milestones

March 2016 – ID-Pal Incorporated in Dublin, Ireland

June 2016 – High Potential Startup Investment – Enterprise Ireland

January 2017 – Accenture’s Fintech Innovation Lab (Ranked #1)

February 2017 – Won Payments Innovator of The Year at European Payments Conference in Berlin

June 2017 – Selected by European Banking Association as top 15 Fintech Startups

September 2017 – Fintech 71 US Accelerator (Ohio)

February 2018 – Temenos Marketplace Partnership agreed

September 2018 – ID-Pal joins Salesforce Accelerate

October 2018 – Won Payments Industry Breakthrough Award at Payexpo in London

January 2019 – ID-Pal becomes Salesforce Partner

February 2019 – ID-Pal becomes Sherpa Technologies Partner (USA)

October 2019 – Became a RegTech 100 company

December 2019 – Achieved ISO 27001 Certification Stage 1

March 2020 – Formed Partnership with 123Signed

March 2020 – Partnered with KYC Global Technologies to form Risk Screen Verify

April 2020 – Partnership with HID Global (USA)

June 2020 – Achieved Full ISO 27001 Certification


ID-Pal is now used in over 43 countries with clients ranging in size from SMEs to large multi-national corporates. In just the past 12 months the company has doubled not only its customer acquisition numbers, but its staff numbers as well.

“Our platform is a sophisticated solution that’s been made simple to use, so it has a wide range of applications across multiple sectors. We will continue to develop our product offering and the technology behind it which we will deliver to new and existing customers in a flexible and bespoke manner, making sure their compliance and customer needs are easily addressed.”

Colum Lyons, CEO ID-Pal

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