Duna, a business identity platform founded by two Stripe veterans, has raised $12.1 million.
The Dutch startup announced the seed funding Tuesday (May 6), noting that it’s happening as Duna works to turn its product into a “shareable business identity” network.
“Identity remains one of the internet’s largest unsolved problems,” Duco van Lanschot, Duna’s founder, said in a news release. “In 1993, The New Yorker published an iconic cartoon featuring two dogs. One sits in front of a computer, saying to the other: On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. Ever since, little has changed. Identity remains tied to legacy systems resulting in billions lost to fraud, friction and fines. We built Duna to fix that.”
David Schreiber, another founder, noted that in a time when artificial intelligence (AI) allows for fast-moving image and document generation, business identity remains “stuck in the era of spreadsheets.” Duna, Schreiber added, helps businesses carry out historically paper-heavy compliance analysis without manual work.
“We’re building a future where businesses do have digital passports — so businesses can identify themselves instantly, securely and universally,” he said.
The company’s goal, the release added, is to make “business identification as simple as two clicks,” with Duna saying its product has allowed customers to boost their onboarding conversion by around 38% within six months.
“Business onboarding used to be a cost center for Plaid. Now, it’s a revenue driver thanks to Duna’s intuitive onboarding flows, compliance automation, and high-end UX,” said Zak Lambert, vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Plaid, which is working with Duna.
Duna’s funding comes as FinTech’s are facing an urgent need to strengthen their fraud prevention and identity verification to protect their operations and their customers, as a recent PYMNTS Intelligence report shows.
The report — “How FinTechs Are Fighting Identity Theft and Identity Fraud” — paints a disturbing portrait of the current fraud landscape for FinTechs.
It shows that around one-third of FinTechs have recently suffered fraud, a trend that mirrors an upward trajectory across the broader financial industry.
In the U.S. alone, financial institutions saw a significant 65% increase in fraud losses, averaging $3.8 million in 2024. One especially concerning aspect is the increasing sophistication of fraudulent activities, making it tough to distinguish them from legitimate transactions.
“Notably, identity-related suspicious activity accounts for 42% of all suspicious banking activity, totaling $212 billion in 2021, with verification circumvention identified as the most reported type of fraud,” PYMNTS wrote recently. “This surge in identity-based fraud, fueled by dark web data and readily available AI tools, poses a significant risk to digital-first entities like FinTechs and their users.”
