Like most innovative businesses, ShareID was born out of frustration and an eagerness to solve a problem.

When Sara Sebti needed to change her phone number, she found that she was unable to access her own bank account for three weeks. "It seemed incredible to me to be blocked for something as simple as changing your phone number," recalls the company's CEO and cofounder.

As the common saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention and after joining forces with her co-founder Sawsen Rezig, the duo developed ShareID, a digital identity authentication solution.

By leveraging AI, ShareID captures the user’s ID document and face to make sure that they are who they claim to be and are live during the authentication, without storing any personal or biometric data. During future interactions, a simple smile will enable the user to prove their identity in real-time. AI algorithms are used for everything from guiding users through the authentication process to verifying and analyzing government-issued IDs with a claimed precision level of up to 99.9% across over 120 countries.

Today ShareID has clients across multiple sectors including finance and enterprise who often face challenges around evolving regulations, rising cyberattacks, and ineffective security processes.

“We understand the many challenges facing businesses who have regulatory and legal requirements to request ID authentication from users,” said the founders. “Often they are overcoming obstacles including poor user experiences and friction in sensitive operations.”

How the technology works

Weak ID authentication processes could leave businesses more vulnerable to identity fraud whilst security options like passwords or “even some two-factor authentication methods aren’t always compliant with regulations,” Sara says.

Indeed, figures indicate these solutions are responsible for a huge $6bn annual loss for credit institutions. Even if some multi-factor authentication solutions are compliant, they are still extremely expensive, costing up to $2.6m annually per business.

With several digital ID verification platforms on the market, what sets ShareID apart from their competitors is their unwavering commitment to protect their users' privacy. The startup doesn’t store any of the data it collects, instead it keeps it in memory on its servers and creates a hash — a unique ID — before wiping the data, meaning effectively it was never stored on the servers. This USP ensures ShareID is legally compliant with data privacy laws, less likely to be at risk of data breaches, and more importantly earn the trust of end-users who value privacy.

“Providing ID authentication without storing personal data is a critical feature both from a privacy and security standpoint. For clients, this means they can adopt a cutting-edge solution that is secure, compliant, and privacy-centric, ensuring their business remains ahead in a digital world that increasingly values data protection,” Sawsen says.

Supercharging business growth

In early 2024, the tech founders were selected to join the second annual cohort of the Google for Startups Growth Academy: AI for Cybersecurity program. By accessing Google products and benefiting from tailored support on additional initiatives like the Google Cloud Program, ShareID was able to accelerate growth and scalability capabilities while minimizing operational overheads.

“At ShareID, we are focused on data privacy and security, so we joined the Google for Startups Cloud Program to deploy it for its scalability and cost efficiency. We rely on Google Cloud to train our AI models and we have migrated our production environment to Google Cloud too. We’ve leveraged other Google products like Google Workspace for collaboration, email, and document management within the ShareID team. It was great to also participate in the Growth Academy: AI for Cybersecurity Program since all the participants were at a similar stage and it was very helpful when discussing the problems some of us have already gone through.”

Since the completion of these programs, ShareID has gone on to collaborate with the French National Gendarmerie (paramilitary police) during the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris.

By equipping the Ministry of the Interior's terminals with their ID solution, ShareID was able to streamline identity checks for the 12 million visitors while strictly respecting privacy rights. As a result, ShareID was able to train their AI models to identify patterns, improve accuracy, and ultimately counter the latest fraud techniques.

"The adoption of our solution for this historic event marks a crucial milestone that strengthens our strategic position and boosts our growth prospects," Sara said of the partnership.

Other significant milestones have seen the startup receive a nomination for the Unicorn Kingdom: Pathfinder Awards and complete a funding raise of €4 million.

As they continue to scale, the founders have ambitious plans to grow ShareID.

“We aspire to become the equivalent of a decentralized login/connect with Google function,” says Sawsen.

The founders are implementing an aggressive expansion strategy to distribute their solution through established players in target regions.

Their long-term vision is to redefine the online ID authentication experience and shape the future of digital trust by setting new standards for a reliable and secure digital environment.

“Ultimately, we want to empower people to take full control of their personal data and digital identity,” Sara says.