Persona Inc., a startup that helps companies such as financial technology providers collect and process identity information from customers, has closed a $150 million funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation.

The Series C round was led by Founders Fund, Persona said in an announcement this morning. Meritech Capital Partners, BOND, Index Ventures and Coatue Management participated as well.

The investment comes less than six months after Persona’s previous raise, a $50 million Series B round. The short time frame between the investments and the significant jump in the amount of capital raised reflects the fact that Persona has been experiencing rapid business growth. The startup says rose by a factor of 20 in the past 12 months while its customer base grew fivefold, though it didn’t provide absolute numbers on either.

San Francisco-based Persona provides an identity platform that companies use to verify their customers. A bank, for example, can leverage the platform to scan customers’ government IDs and any supplemental documents they might supply during the process of creating a new bank account. Persona’s platform also includes features that allow it to process related information such as biometric data, as well as automatically respond to errors that may occur during the data collection process to avoid impacting the user experience.

Persona provides a set of tools to help companies more easily integrate its platform’s capabilities into their applications. An interface builder enables organizations customize their data collection forms with their corporate branding. A drag-and-drop workflow tool makes it possible to create automated procedures for managing collected customer data.

“With our flexible and powerful infrastructure, businesses can orchestrate their entire identity experience from end to end instead of weaving a bunch of disparate solutions together,” Persona Chief Executive Officer Rick Song wrote in a blog post today.

Using a single product instead of multiple tools is often more convenient for companies because it avoids potential software integration challenges. Moreover, reducing the number of components that a firm’s developers have to work with often also lowers the amount of custom code they have to write. Less custom code means fewer potential bugs and faster project completion times.

Another objective that Persona has prioritized while building its platform is ensuring that the feature set is customizable enough to be used by companies across multiple segments. The startup’s focus on customizability has helped broaden its addressable market. 

“We’ve been very intentional about giving businesses the building blocks they need to personalize the identity experience based on their industry, use case, risk appetite, regulatory need, customer base and more,” Song wrote. 

In the financial services sector, organizations use Persona’s platform to support their fraud detection and regulatory compliance activities. The startup’s financial sector customers include publicly traded firms such as payments giant Square Inc. and Brex Inc., a $7.4 billion startup that provides a platform used by companies to manage business spending. Persona’s platform is also used by organizations in other areas, including real-estate, food delivery and healthcare. 

The startup will use the process from its latest funding round to grow its team and build more features. To date, Persona has received $217.5 million from investors. 

Image: Persona