Cambridge Blockchain, a distributed digital identity system, has raised $7m in a Series A financing round.
The round was led by HCM Capital, the investing arm of the Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn Technology Group. Other participants in the round include Partech Ventures and Digital Currency Group, both of which backed the company’s $2m funding round in February 2017.
“HCM has invested in blockchain start-ups since early 2016, as we saw the potential of distributed ledger technology with enterprise use cases including Industrial Internet, IoT-enabled manufacturing, supply chain provenance, trade finance, and payments,” said Jack Lee, founding managing partner of HCM Capital.
“However, we soon realised that digital identity is a critical building block to achieve value through decentralised information transfers. Cambridge Blockchain has the best team and experience handling strict requirements from financial institutions for privacy and personal data compliance, which can be extended to grow new applications in the decentralized digital economy of the future.”
Know-Your-Customer (KYC) compliance obligations are costly, time-consuming, and excessively redundant, while strict new customer privacy laws are increasingly enacted and enforced, meaning global financial institutions are burdened by the need to both collect and protect data.
With this challenge in mind, Cambridge Blockchain claims its distributed architecture resolves the ‘competing challenges of transparency and privacy’, resulting in stronger regulatory compliance, lower costs and a seamless customer experience.
Its software offers secure, client-controlled peer-to-peer data sharing and a platform to connect multiple identity validators. The companies’ combined offerings are designed to enable full compliance with stringent data privacy rules including GDPR.
Romain Lavault, general partner at Partech, explained that as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) takes full effect this month, Cambridge Blockchain is well-positioned to expand its enterprise data management software to serve a broader global market.
“Blockchain has been a hot buzzword for a few years now, but very few software companies have actually reached full-scale production rollouts. This is where Cambridge Blockchain has impressed us and their first customers in Europe,” he added.
Earlier this year, Cambridge Blockchain combined its distributed digital identity system with IHS Markit’s Know-your-customer (KYC) services. By combing IHS Markit’s kyc.com services with Cambridge Blockchain’s distributed digital identity system, the pair claim they can resolve the competing challenges of transparency and privacy in the industry. This will results in faster customer onboarding, lower costs, and enhanced compliance through a single, trusted and consistent view of customer reference data.
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