PROVE

Rodger Desai and Mike Brody founded Payfone in 2008 with a simple idea: mobile phone numbers are tied to real identities in ways that are very hard to fake. If you could tap into carrier-level data, you could verify people without friction.

They built the company around that insight, partnering directly with US mobile carriers. In July 2020 Payfone raised $100 million, bought the mobile authentication business of Early Warning Services (including Authentify), and renamed itself Prove.

B2B SaaS. Banks, fintech companies, and healthcare providers pay Prove for API-based identity verification and onboarding.

They process billions of identity checks per year, charging on a per-transaction or volume subscription basis depending on client size.

Prove Identity — real-time phone-based identity verification for onboarding and KYC. Prove Pre-Fill — autofills a customer's details from phone intelligence to speed up signups.

Prove Auth — phone-centric authentication for logins and high-risk transactions.

Deep partnerships with the major US mobile carriers gave Prove real-time phone intelligence that competitors cannot easily copy. It grew from basic phone authentication into a full identity platform for onboarding, fraud prevention and account takeover protection.

In 2020 it bought Early Warning Services' mobile authentication business, including Authentify, adding hundreds of financial institution customers. The 2023 funding was aimed at expanding outside the US.

The identity verification market is crowded. Jumio, Onfido, Socure, and Persona all compete for the same fintech and banking budgets.

Prove's moat is carrier data access, but maintaining those partnerships as regulations tighten is an ongoing challenge.

Apax Digital led a $100 million round in 2020, with Oak HC/FT joining. MassMutual Ventures and Capital One Ventures led a $40 million round in 2023 that valued the company above $1 billion.

Earlier backers include Synchrony Financial, RRE Ventures, Opus Capital and Verizon Ventures. Its roster is heavy with banks and financial firms that also use the product.