September 14, 2021, London: PassFort, the SaaS RegTech provider whose platform automates financial crime and compliance processes, today announced the close of its Series A funding, which gives the firm access to 16.2 million USD. The money will be used to realise PassFort’s global growth plans and its ambition to be the category leader in compliance automation for regulated businesses.
The $16.2 million Series A was led by the US growth equity fund, Level Equity, with participation from PassFort’s existing investors OpenOcean, Episode 1 and Entrepreneur First. $4.89 million worth of venture debt was also provided by Shard Credit Partners – with PassFort being the first investment from its newly launched UK tech-focused venture debt strategy.
The investment teams behind Level Equity and Shard Credit Partners have significant experience and a high level of confidence investing in the RegTech category PassFort now leads and are further boosting the company’s global ambitions.
The funding round follows major customer wins for PassFort, including Curve and WorldRemit, and recent senior hires in its sales and marketing functions. The company is now set for a scaleup in the implementation of its RegTech solution worldwide.
“We are excited to have secured this substantial new funding so quickly.” Said Donald Gillies, PassFort’s CEO and Co-Founder. “PassFort is currently capitalising on significant growth across the digital economy and the need for our automated compliance solutions, designed to make access to our customers’ products compliant and crime-free.”
Donald added: “It is a testament to the efforts of our team and company culture to have come through the last 12 months in a position where our products and our customer base are growing so rapidly. This helped generate the high investor demand to partner with PassFort on this next phase of growth.”
“Over the last few years, financial institutions and organisations have experienced exponential growth in business volumes and data, which has only increased the complexity in staying compliant with ever-evolving regulatory laws. In parallel, we’ve experienced an unprecedented rise in sophisticated financial crime activity as channels into financial systems have been digitised. This has underscored the importance of compliance matters such as AML/KYC, yet companies often have to weigh the trade-offs between speed, compliance and automation. PassFort has solved this challenge by providing a next-generation RegTech software solution that enables customers to offer a seamless customer onboarding experience, maintain best-in-class monitoring capabilities, and balance automation vs. human touch via its intelligent orchestration engine,” said Charles Chen, Partner at Level Equity, who will join PassFort’s board of directors. “We are thrilled to partner with the industry thought leader in this space and look forward to supporting the company’s future growth initiatives.”
William Chappel, Head of Venture Debt at Shard Credit Partners, said “We are delighted to have been able to provide financing support to PassFort and are extremely pleased to announce this as the first deal of the new Shard Credit Partners tech-focused venture debt strategy. PassFort is a name that I have followed for many years, and Donald and his team continue to build a dynamic and exciting offering. We are looking forward to working closely with PassFort as they continue to achieve strong growth milestones”.
About PassFort
Founded in 2015 by Donald Gillies and Henry Irish and headquartered in London, PassFort has supported regulated financial services companies to rapidly onboard more than 5 million customers in 197 countries, then manage risk and compliance standards throughout the customer lifecycle.
Born in the cloud, PassFort’s solutions are designed for the digital economy: hardware-free, affordable, flexible to configure and easy to use, with constant feature innovation and a choice of deployment options. Our low to no-code solution thrives on complexity, solving compliance challenges at scale without being costly to implement or evolve. We support multiple customer types and product lines, with effortless expansion across 211 jurisdictions.
PassFort removes the compromise between compliance and customer experience in the fight against financial crime. More efficiency. Great customer experiences. No compromise.
e. info@passfort.com | w. www.passfort.com | t. @PassFortKYC
About Level Equity
Based in New York, NY and San Francisco, CA, Level Equity is a growth equity firm focused on providing capital to rapidly growing software and internet companies. The firm manages over $2.7 billion across a series of long term committed investment partnerships. For more information about Level Equity, visit www.levelequity.com.
Shard Credit Partners
Shard Credit Partners is an alternative investment fund manager focused on niche, high return private credit strategies in the UK lower mid-market. The firm invests in solid small to medium sized businesses with strong management teams, supporting them by providing transformative growth capital and event driven financing in support of innovation, growth and expansion. The fund invests in businesses across all sectors and throughout the UK. For more information about Shard Credit Partners, visit www.shardcreditpartners.com.