Startup of the Day: Authologic, a Polish global digital identity verification platform

Authologic, founded in 2020 by Jarek Sygitowicz, Krzysztof Klimczak, and Marek Rogozinski, offers identity verification solutions through online video, data, and digital IDs. The company’s unified e-ID platform aggregates hundreds of systems, bridging the gap between legacy systems and digital identity, and easing the transition towards digital IDs.

In the Startup of the Day column, Authologic’s team shares more details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originate from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Authologic is a full-stack digital identity verification hub. What that means is that we give businesses a secure framework to seamlessly incorporate electronic ID (e-ID) verification methods in the form of an aggregation and orchestration layer. This layer sits on top of the Know Your Customer and anti-money laundering processes a business already uses. Once it’s incorporated, a business can immediately accept government-issued digital IDs, identity wallets, and bank IDs. This is great for streamlining onboarding, improving the cost of acquisitions, and reducing AI fraud risk since e-IDs don’t rely on traditional verification methods like uploading photos of physical cards and documents.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

We started Authologic in Poland, which has embraced e-ID issuance so enthusiastically that it’s a leader in Europe for adoption and integration. About 80% of Poles have e-IDs, and another 25% use mObywatel, a national digital identity wallet. Businesses here are benefitting from the security and convenience e-IDs bring, so we decided to make a layer that businesses anywhere could use. Global e-ID issuance is a question of when, not if, and we’re working to be the solution businesses turn to as they look to enhance their KYC and bridge the gap between traditional methods, e-IDs, and digital wallets.

Issuance and implementation of e-IDs isn’t totally widespread yet, so our Hub is designed to run e-ID verification without disrupting existing KYC systems. The overarching goal is to mitigate the risks posed by AI-created synthetic identities, fabricated data, and deepfake videos, and digital wallets and e-IDs are extremely effective tools in that fight. Governments already see these benefits and are moving digitized passports and IDs into the mainstream. Operators might initially feel somewhat forced to accommodate these new verification methods, thanks in part to added regulation. However, in time, the short-term adjustment to KYC processes will prove worth it—especially as the added benefit of convenience for customers is also realized. Soon, we expect there to be a broad consensus that the convenience, privacy and security benefits outweigh the reluctance to adopt them into KYC processes.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

We started building Authologic during the early days of COVID-19, when regulated industries were forced to become highly aware of the necessity of super secure remote verification processes. Our backgrounds were split between fintech and established banks, so we had firsthand experience with some of the inefficiencies of traditional KYC processes presented in that context.

Because the founding team were all developers and thus fully technical, we moved fast. We built the initial prototype in just a few months and netted our first customers—even before we were accepted into Y Combinator! Our focus from day one was talking to users, solving real pain points, and iterating quickly.

One key challenge was that many companies assumed they’d already solved their identity verification problems with the vendors they had in place. But as we dug in, it became clear that no existing solution could handle the complexity and fragmentation coming with e-IDs, wallets, open banking, and global compliance. That revelation helped shape what Authologic is today. We’re not just another identity check, but an aggregation and orchestration layer that makes all identity data sources work together.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

We founded Authologic in 2020 during the pandemic, and launched in 2021.

Tell us about the stratup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Authologic operates a tiered model, which is different to the traditional volume-based models the KYC industry is used to. Our customers are primarily banks, fintechs, gaming and gambling companies, and other regulated businesses. They integrate via a single API to access a wide range of identity verification methods which are available in our Hub. We offer both legacy checks (like document scans and liveness detection) and modern methods such as BankID, e-ID, and wallet-based verification.

While many national identity wallets like those currently rolling out across the EU are free to use, businesses still need infrastructure to integrate them, orchestrate methods and fallback options, manage compliance workflows, and analyze performance. That’s where we come in.

We provide the aggregation, orchestration, back office, and analytics to make it all work together. We also maintain all the compliance for the methods in our Hub. Our value lies in enabling companies’ flexibility, scalability, and ease of integration.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Right now our target markets are pretty much any businesses who have to be compliant in KYC/AML, though we do see more traction in some areas over others. As e-IDs’ use cases expand into new industries that we can’t even predict yet, so will our target market.

For example, we’re already being used by Homegirl, a Polish startup that created an app for young women to keep themselves safe at night through a communication network, a reporting function that alerts other users to dangerous places, and an SOS button. It needs to verify the identities of the young women in its network, and it uses e-IDs via Authologic to do it.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

Yes, our product is live and usage is growing fast. We have some well-known names on our website, spanning Europe and beyond.

On the traction side, we tripled our revenue last year and significantly grew the number of methods we offer via our Hub. We’re also participating in major EU-level infrastructure pilots that will shape the future of digital identity for citizens and businesses.

Our Hub currently supports millions of identity checks per year and is built to enable and support the interoperability businesses need, no matter which region their customers are based in.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

We’re currently a team of over 30 people and growing fast. In the last 18 months, the size of the team has tripled. All of us founders coded the early product, and the company is deeply technical to this day. Strong engineering and product talent is top priority.

And as our base grows, we’ll be looking towards sales and customer success, especially as we continue our international expansion.

We recently moved our headquarters from Warsaw to London but still maintain an important presence in Poland. We’re in the U.S. thanks to our offices in San Francisco.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

We’ve had great support from investors to date. Most recently we secured our $8.2 million Series A. This was led by OpenOcean with participation from Y Combinator, Peak Capital, and SMOK VC, a Polish-US fund investing in top CEE entrepreneurs.

The funding has helped us scale our team, accelerate product development, and expand into new markets. We’ve been investing heavily in our Hub, integrations, and analytics tools to support global enterprise clients.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

The identity verification space is being radically reshaped by user demand, regulation, and AI. Given the expanded EU mandates around e-ID and wallet adoption and the increasing sophistication of deep fakes, businesses can’t afford to compromise on a digital identity infrastructure that isn’t flexible, secure, and scalable.

So that’s what we’re building: an identity layer with a single API to handle everything from plastic IDs to next-gen digital wallets. Over the next two years, we plan to expand across Europe, the UK, and North America.