Having been locked in homes and home offices for some time during the spread of the coronavirus, the importance of digital remote work and digital identification has grown to unprecedented heights. Estonian startup Veriff provides smart and scalable identity verification that allows to keep companies working online all over the world.

Online verification for notaries

Through the solution offered by Veriff, many companies have managed to keep their business and cash flow open. Probably one of the most remarkable achievements of Veriff’s identification solutions has been how it helped Estonian notaries, as one of the most conservative business sectors, to continue working during the lockdown, while a lot of their work is done using online verification provided by Veriff.

According to the head of the Chamber of Notaries Merle Saar-Johanson, the use of online verification instead of a physical visit to a notary is growing rapidly. If, however, a physical visit is needed during the next weeks, it is recommended that only people directly needed for the transaction attend and third parties such as realtors or family members of the parties do not. Special measures are in use – for example, changing paper copies of documents is kept to a minimum. People who have arrived in Estonia from abroad during the two past weeks prior to a planned visit are not allowed to physically visit the notaries’ offices.

The founder and CEO of the online verification provider Veriff, Kaarel Kotkas, told the technology portal DigiPro that due to the emergency situation, wider use of the service is expected. “During the current situation when face-to-face communication is kept to an absolute minimum, distance-verification becomes more important and online identity verification is just the solution to be used,” he noted.

Veriff donated 1 million verifications

Moreover, at the time, when the life goes online, Veriff has decided to donate 1 million verifications for non-profit organisations.

According to Kaarel Kotkas, the demand for remote verifications has significantly increased at the time of the coronavirus pandemic. “We decided to help nonprofits and foundations that could benefit from our technology as they are working hard despite the challenges presented by the pandemic and finding solutions to put a stop to it. We’re focusing on solutions and making different services accessible from distance. We are a force of good and would like to make a difference.”

Potential beneficiaries of free verifications range from universities who need to verify people taking exams to marketplaces that have volunteers who help people in need and to registries that could tackle fake accounts and set up reliable databases about people in quarantine. But also, digital health care service providers, organisations fighting fake news and beyond.

Sacrifice for success

To be a winner in the changing circumstances, the companies have to react to the market changes quickly. If the market demands it, you may need to change your product or service, hire someone with new skills and lay off people whose skills are not needed at the moment.

However, as a respond to the changing market Veriff had to lay off 63 employees in order to emerge stronger from the difficult situation as a company. The redundancies were mainly jobs, which were essentially manual checks on the identities of African countries, as demand fell, and their work was taken over by robots.

The interest in using Veriff’s online identification solutions has grown rapidly. According to DigiPro, Veriff expects the number of orders to increase by almost 50% in the coming months.

Want to invest in Veriff?

Veriff is one of those companies that will emerge victorious from the crisis. And you want to invest in Veriff, you are welcome to join first ever Online Startup Demo Day at May 14th where 10 exclusive Estonian startups, hand-picked by Invest Estonia and Startup Estonia, are pitching their ideas. As a potential investor who has registered for the event, you will also have an opportunity to e-meet and e-communicate with the founders of the Estonian Top startups, and turn the crisis into profit.

The 10 remarkable startups, resolving and growing in crisis and looking for investment €250K or more, are:

• Veriff
• Bolt
• Wolf3D
• Xolo
• Viveohealth
• Visory
• Pactum
• Fractory
• Fooddocs
• CoModule

Join our Online Startup Demo Day here.