About ID.me
ID.me was founded in 2010 by Blake Hall and Matthew Thompson, initially focused on verifying military service member and veteran status to help those groups access discounts and benefits reserved for them online, before expanding into a much broader identity verification platform used for a wide range of purposes requiring confidence that an online user is genuinely who they claim to be, including verifying eligibility for government benefits, professional credentials, and various other identity-dependent online services.
ID.me's platform lets individuals create a verified digital identity credential once, using a combination of government-issued identity document verification, biometric matching such as facial recognition, and other identity proofing methods, then reuse that verified identity across multiple different government agencies and other organizations that accept ID.me credentials, rather than each individual agency or service needing to independently verify a person's identity from scratch using their own separate processes. The company has built particularly significant relationships with U.S. federal and state government agencies, including a number of state unemployment insurance agencies that adopted ID.me identity verification to combat a substantial wave of fraudulent unemployment benefit claims during the COVID-19 pandemic, when unprecedented benefit claim volumes and expanded eligibility created significant opportunities for fraudulent claims using stolen identities, and the Internal Revenue Service, which has used ID.me for identity verification related to accessing certain online tax services. ID.me's government identity verification role, while addressing genuine fraud prevention needs, has also drawn public scrutiny and privacy concerns, particularly regarding its use of facial recognition technology and questions about appropriate government reliance on a private company for identity verification tied to accessing government services and benefits, concerns that prompted some adjustments to how certain government agencies implemented ID.me verification requirements. The company has raised substantial venture funding from investors including CapitalG, Fidelity, and Silver Lake, reaching a valuation exceeding $1.5 billion.
