South Korean Blockchain ID Service Raises $8 Million in Series A

ICONLOOP, a South Korean blockchain startup that provides digital identification services, received its first venture capital investment through an $8 million Series A funding round, the company said.

ICONLOOP is a subsidiary of DAYLI Financial Group, one of the largest fintech companies in Asia. The financing round was led by the quasi-government agency Korea Technology Finance Corporation (KOTEC). Another six investment companies, including T.S. Investment, also backed ICONLOOP in this round.

Proceeds will be used to launch its digital identification service “my-ID” and expand a group of expected clients called my-ID Alliance, which currently consists of 27 companies.

That client group has a range of companies and organizations including banks, security firms, e-commerce companies and manufacturing companies.

The service will be launched during the first half of 2020 for commercialized uses, the company said.

Founded in 2016, the fintech firm initially designed an ID service based on blockchain technology for non-face-to-face openings of banking accounts, the company said in June.

The South Korean financial regulator, the Financial Services Commission, included the firm’s my-ID’ service into the ‘Innovative Financial Services and Regulations Sandbox.

A KOTEC spokesperson said:

“The blockchain technology is evolving into practical applications such as decentralized ID services in line with the global trend giving users back the personal data sovereignty.”

Another ICONLOOP’s flagship project is the ICON public blockchain network that uses the loopchain protocol to connect different blockchains. The project is supported by ICON Foundation, which held an initial coin offering for ICX. The coin was the 58th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization as of Oct.11, according to CoinMarketCap.