Investing in Transmit Security, a Leader in Passwordless Authentication

For individuals, authenticating their identity online can be a major nuisance: they have to remember passwords and answers to security questions, click on CAPTCHA images, etc. For enterprises, the cost associated with passwords and the difficulties they cause is only growing.

Many businesses are still unaware of the negative impact a suboptimal identity experience has on their business, revenue, and customer loyalty, however. 55% of consumers say they’ve stopped using a website because the login process was too complex, and 92% say they’d rather leave a website than go through the hassle of recovering or resetting their login credentials. Account recovery also contributes to fraud, as 85% of account takeovers happen through that process.

Enter Transmit Security. Seeking to “rid the world of passwords,” Transmit Security offers a centralized user authentication tool that has won the company a leadership position in identity orchestration—and now they are tackling “passwordless authentication” as well.

Currently, to use many mobile apps you must prove your identity first to your device and then again to your app. But what if your device could talk to your app and authenticate you there as well, eliminating the need for a separate username and password? Transmit Security’s BindID does just that, creating a win-win for end users and enterprises by sparing consumers yet another password combination and helping enterprises deliver a better identity experience. It also eliminates the need to store passwords, removing a point of vulnerability to hackers and reducing the liability of the enterprise. Passwordless authentication is an enormous market, and with Transmit Security’s deep authentication expertise they are well positioned to lead in this domain as well.

Transmit Security’s bold, password-free vision is driven by a leadership team with the determination and domain experience to back it up. CEO and co-founder Mickey Boodaei and President and co-founder Rakesh Loonkar are serial entrepreneurs who co-founded fraud detection startup Trusteer—which sold to IBM for $1B in 2014—and teamed up again to found Transmit Security. Rounding out Transmit Security’s incredibly seasoned leadership team is CTO Eldan Ben Haim, who was also CTO of Trusteer. Together, they have already bootstrapped Transmit Security to significant size (about 200 employees as of June 2021). The Citi Ventures team has known Mickey and Rakesh for several years, and we are thrilled to partner with them as investors. They have a strong track record of building category-defining companies, and we see that they have the same passion to scale Transmit Security to become a major force in identity.

For all these reasons and more, we’re excited to announce our participation in Transmit Security’s recent $543 million Series A round alongside investors including Insight Partners, General Atlantic, and Goldman Sachs.

For more information on Transmit Security, email Arvind Purushotham at arvind.purushotham@citi.com.