> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # How Onfido Makes Money: The Identity Verification Company Acquired by Entrust - URL: https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/how-onfido-makes-money-the-identity-verification-company-acquired-by-entrust/ - Published: 2026-09-18T10:00:02.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-18T10:00:03.000Z - Description: How Onfido makes money is a story of identity checks, usage-based pricing and rapid growth. From three Oxford students to a $650M acquisition by Entrust, here’s how the UK identity-verification company built its business. - Author: Sharoni Banerjee - Tags: Founder Stories --- Three Oxford students got tired of waiting weeks for a background check. So they built a company to speed the process up. That company is Onfido, and it now sits at the centre of one of the more interesting founder stories in UK tech: a business built on verifying strangers' identities, sold to a US security giant for a sum few of its early backers would have predicted. This piece looks at the **Onfido business model**, how Onfido makes money today, what it actually charges per check, and the Onfido Entrust acquisition that changed who owns it. --- ## What Onfido Does Onfido verifies a person's identity by checking a government-issued document against a live selfie, using AI trained to catch forged IDs and spoofed faces. It was founded in 2012 by three University of Oxford students - Husayn Kassai, Eamon Jubbawy and Ruhul Amin - who had each sat through slow, manual background checks and decided the process deserved a rebuild. The company started out in background-checking for employers and recruiters before evolving into the identity-verification business it is today. Kassai and Jubbawy met running Oxford Entrepreneurs, the university's start-up society; Amin, an engineering student, became the technical co-founder. Oxford backed the company from its earliest days through its incubator, and later provided £20,000 through the Oxford Seed Fund in 2013. Husayn Kassai ran the company as CEO through its fastest growth years; Mike Tuchen had taken over by 2021\. By the time Entrust came calling, Onfido had grown into a business with more than 500 employees and over 1,200 customers globally *(Entrust, April 2024)*, built around what it calls the Real Identity Platform - document checks, biometric matching, and fraud signals bundled into a single API that banks and fintechs plug straight into their onboarding flow. --- ## Onfido's Business Model **How Onfido makes money** comes down to one thing: charging businesses per identity check, not charging the people being verified. Banks, fintechs, gambling and gaming firms, and e-commerce platforms pay to run each new customer's ID and selfie through Onfido's platform as part of their Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money-laundering compliance obligations. The Onfido business model is best understood as usage-based B2B pricing: fees are tied to the number of identity checks run, with the price per check shaped by which verification products are used and how many checks a customer runs annually. It scaled into a genuinely large business. Onfido said it passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in Q2 2021, growing more than 100% year-on-year for five consecutive quarters *(Onfido, BusinessWire, July 2021).* The clearest number, though, comes from a regulatory filing rather than a press release. For the year ending 31 January 2023, Onfido reported revenue of £102 million against an operating loss of £70 million, according to accounts filed at Companies House *(Reuters, February 2024)*. Growth was real, but profitability wasn't there yet - a trade-off that has shadowed the Onfido business model since its earliest funding rounds. By the time Entrust entered exclusive talks in February 2024, Onfido's ARR had climbed past $130 million; two months later, at completion, Entrust cited more than $140 million in annual revenue *(Entrust press releases, February and April 2024).* That's how Onfido makes money at scale: usage-based fees compounding across a widening base of regulated customers who need identity checks built into their sign-up flow. --- ## How Onfido Prices Its Identity Checks Onfido does not publish a standard commercial rate card for its general customer base. Understanding **how Onfido makes money** on paper is one thing; understanding what it actually charges business customers per check is another, and that part is far less transparent. The company has never listed standard commercial rates, and TrustRadius currently records no published pricing plans for it. There is one public exception. Onfido Ltd's entry on the UK Government's Digital Marketplace, under the G-Cloud 14 framework, prices its identity verification service at £0.43 to £2.12 per transaction - a real, published rate, aimed at public-sector buyers rather than the open commercial market. Beyond that listing, Onfido's own service documentation describes pricing as varying by verification type - document verification, biometric verification, and proof of address are separate products and by the volume of checks a customer commits to annually. For everyone else, pricing is negotiated directly. Competitors and industry commentary describe the same pattern from the outside: Onfido sells through custom, sales-negotiated annual quotes rather than a self-serve price list, with the final rate depending on which verification products a customer uses and how many checks they run each year. | Source | Published pricing | Notes | | ---------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------- | | UK Government Digital Marketplace (G-Cloud 14) | £0.43–£2.12 per transaction | Current public listing | | Onfido service documentation | Rates vary by verification type and volume | Document, biometric, and address checks priced as separate components | | TrustRadius | No published pricing plans | Third-party pricing directory | | Commercial contracts | Not publicly standardised | Negotiated based on checks, configuration, and volume | The public pricing evidence shows that Onfido's transaction rates vary by verification type and volume, while commercial contracts are negotiated around committed usage and configuration, which is a more accurate picture of Onfido pricing per verification than any single headline number can capture. --- ## The Entrust Acquisition Entrust now owns Onfido, having completed its acquisition of the London-based identity verification firm on 9 April 2024\. The Onfido Entrust acquisition became public on 7 February 2024, when Entrust announced it had entered exclusive talks to buy the company. Reuters reported, citing sources close to the deal, that Onfido could be valued at around $650 million, a figure repeated across UK trade press in the days that followed, though Entrust itself never confirmed a price. Two months later, the deal closed. Entrust's own announcement described Onfido as a business with over $140 million in annual revenue, more than 500 employees, and over 1,200 customers worldwide, but, true to form for private acquisitions, the exact terms of the Onfido Entrust acquisition were never disclosed. Entrust was acquiring an established identity-verification business with more than 1,200 customers, more than 500 employees, and over $140 million in annual revenue which is a proven, if not especially profitable, answer to how Onfido makes money at scale. For Oxford, where it all started, the sale had its own postscript. The Oxford Seed Fund, which invested £20,000 in 2013, said the eventual sale represented an 80-times return on that original investment - reportedly the largest such return the University has seen from a student-led company. Onfido now runs as part of Entrust's wider identity-security portfolio, its technology folded into a much larger stack of biometric and document-verification tools serving banks, governments and enterprises. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/05/a4/05a4a052-18ab-4836-8924-ec8b322c371c/content/images/2026/09/Onfido-Business-Model.png.png) Onfido verification space ### FAQs **Who owns Onfido now?** Entrust Corporation owns Onfido, having completed its acquisition of the company on 9 April 2024\. Following the Onfido Entrust acquisition, Onfido now operates as part of Entrust's wider identity-security portfolio rather than as an independent business. **What does Onfido cost?** Onfido doesn't publish standard commercial pricing - TrustRadius lists no current plans, and most customers negotiate custom annual contracts. Onfido pricing per verification is only published on the UK Government's Digital Marketplace, where Onfido is listed at £0.43 to £2.12 per transaction, with the final rate shaped by verification type and volume. **How much does Onfido charge per verification?** Onfido pricing per verification is only published in one place: its UK Government Digital Marketplace (G-Cloud) listing, priced at £0.43 to £2.12 per transaction. Commercial customers negotiate annual contracts directly with Onfido, with rates depending on which verification products they use and how many checks they run each year. ***Also read:*** [*What the UK Maritime Innovation Hub Reveals About Britain's Maritime Tech Bet*](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/what-the-uk-maritime-innovation-hub-reveals-about-britains-maritime-tech-bet/) --- **Sources:** Figures drawn from Onfido and Entrust press releases (2021–2024), Reuters reporting on Companies House filings and the proposed acquisition, the UK Government Digital Marketplace, TrustRadius, and University of Oxford Saïd Business School/Oxford Seed Fund reporting on the 2024 sale. Figures reflect the most recent available data at the time of writing. ***The EP+ Editorial Desk covers UK startups, founder stories, and venture capital. All editorial content is independently produced and human-reviewed before publication.***