3 FEB 2020
Mastercard has made a strategic investment in Trust Stamp’s advanced cryptographic services to enhance data security in environments with low connectivity.
AI-powered authentication services company Trust Stamp has announced that it received a strategic investment from Mastercard.
The start-up, which was founded in 2015, applies advanced cryptographic techniques and AI-powered presentation-attack detection tools to biometric and other identity data. It has created a proprietary non-PII (personally identifiable information) hash, called EgHash.
Trust Stamp’s EgHash is a unique, tokenised identity that cannot be reverse engineered. It is used in a number of verticals, including humanitarian and development services, banking, fintech, anti-money laundering (AML) compliance, as well as real estate and law enforcement.
An existing partnership
Headquartered in the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Trust Stamp is a graduate of the 2018 Mastercard Start Path accelerator programme.
Trust Stamp CEO Gareth Genner said: “Our initial work with Mastercard has been focused upon enhancing privacy and data security in environments with low connectivity, and we have been impressed by the breadth and depth of Mastercard’s commitment to that space.
“The programmes currently being developed have the potential to improve the lives of communities around the world and we are proud to be a key component of the underlying technology.“
Mastercard invested an undisclosed sum in Trust Stamp, furthering collaboration between the two companies.
Their first collaboration was a secure non-PII authentication network for both online and offline environments, which was launched at the June 2019 ID4Africa conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Mastercard’s senior vice-president for humanitarian and development programmes, Shashi Raghunandan, said: “This is part of our commitment to make the digital economy work for everyone, everywhere. Trust Stamp’s AI-powered technologies help us to provide our development sector partners with robust authentication solutions.”
Trust Stamp has raised $7.7m according to Crunchbase. Previous investors include Emergent Technology Holdings, Second Century Ventures and Queen City Fintech.
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/mastercard-trust-stamp-invesment
