PROVE

Rodger Desai 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.

He built the company around that insight, partnering directly with US mobile carriers. The company rebranded from Payfone to Prove in 2021 to reflect its expanded identity platform beyond just phone authentication.

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 consumer data using phone intelligence to accelerate onboarding", "Prove Auth — phone-centric multi-factor authentication for account login and high-risk transactions" ]

Deep partnerships with all major US mobile carriers gave Prove access to real-time phone intelligence that competitors can't easily replicate. They expanded from basic authentication into a full digital identity platform covering customer onboarding, fraud prevention, and account takeover protection.

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.

Strategic investors include Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Goldman Sachs, and Truist Financial. The investor roster is a who's who of the financial services industry.