Bahrain’s identity verification startup FACEKI closes seed

August 16, 2022

Identity verification platform FACEKI has reportedly closed its seed round on an undisclosed amount.

Nama Ventures, a technology-focused venture capital firm, served as the lead investor, according to a report from Wamda. Other commitments came from Vision Ventures and unnamed ‘prominent’ angel investors.

The RegTech company is currently looking to expand its global footprint and further the development of its platform.

Based in Bahrain, FACEKI was founded in 2020 and offers biometric facial recognition and identity verification services to improve customer onboarding. It was created by Hamza Al-Ghatam, Dr Mustafa Marhama and Nabeel Radhi, combining their experience in security, cybercrime, AI and marketing.

Its platform boasts real-time identity verification and biometric authentication. Its technology handles liveness, anti-spoofing, age, gender, and nationality checks.

Vision Ventures founding partner and CEO Kais Al Essa told Wamda, “With the huge increase in digital transformation post COVID, banks, FinTech startups and companies worldwide need for automated customer onboarding, fraud protection and KYC tools have skyrocketed.

“The team at FACEKI have developed unique technologies that enable FACEKI to be one of the best providers of such technology in the MENA region and one of the strong competitors worldwide. The team has the technical capabilities as well as the business acumen to further develop the product and support their business customers worldwide. We anticipate such infrastructure services in FinTech to be Unicorns and FACEKI is no exception.”

FACEKI previously closed a pre-seed funding round in October 2021. The investment size was not disclosed, but Nama Ventures served as the lead backer.

In other FinTech news, Bahrain recently saw the launch of a female founded neobank aimed at the Gen Z market. Savii launched its loyalty programme app at the start of 2022, following the close of its pre-seed funding round. The platform aims to launch a prepaid debit card and digital wallet.