Jumio

Jumio is an online mobile payment and identity verification company that provides card and ID scanning and validation products for mobile and web transactions, which they sell as "Netverify Trusted Identity as a Service".

History
Jumio was founded in 2010 by Daniel Mattes, and backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Eduardo Saverin (co-founder of Facebook), among others. Mattes resigned in 2015 after an internal board investigation. Stephen Stuut took over as CEO in 2016, filing for Chapter 11 in March, and Jumio was acquired by Centana Growth Partners in May.

In August of the same year, Jumio raised $15 million from the private equity firm Millennium Technology Value Partners and Centana Growth Partners.

The company continued its upward trajectory, raising $150 million in March 2021 and named the “Best Fraud Prevention Solution” by the 2023 Tech Ascension Awards.

Legal Battles
When Jumio declared bankruptcy, a shareholder filed a suit against Eduardo Saverin, one of the company’s backers, and other former executives for gross mismanagement of the company’s finances. A spokesperson for Saverin said the lawsuit had “no merit.”

In 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Mattes with defrauding investors. Mattes agreed to settle the charges for north of $17 million. According to the SEC complaint, Mattes grossly overstated Jumio revenue in 2013 and 2014 and then sold his personal shares to investors for $14 million, hiding these sales from the board. In 2015, the company corrected its financial results and filed for bankruptcy in 2016.

Around the same time, the SEC settled a separate case against Chad Starkey, former CFO of Jumio, for his behavior concerning Matte’s actions. The settlement included a payment from Starkey of approximately $420,000. In February 2023, Jumio faced litigation as the provider of Binance biometric services. An Illinois resident claimed that Jumio violated BIPA, the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, by collecting and storing biometric data of Binance customers. Jumio argued to get the case dismissed, but a judge ruled that the case had merit.