Mesh, a provider of real-time professional license verification trusted by leading marketplaces, today announced the launch of its Multi-Factor Business Identity solution for marketplaces, e-commerce, and vendor and contractor compliance. Co-founded by ex-Amazon executives Diego Asenjo (CEO) and Tony Bryan (CTO), and following a $5.7 million seed round led by Greycroft, Mesh now helps companies verify, onboard, and monitor any legitimate U.S. business – along with their registration, licensing, insurance, and background information.
In a statement, Mesh said most companies with business onboarding, trust and safety, and vendor compliance needs depend on manual reviews. Advisory firm Liminal found that 98% of surveyed companies require some manual review, with nearly 60% relying on manual reviews for at least a quarter of their business verifications. Their findings among financial institutions echo Mesh’s insights on buyer and seller onboarding in e-commerce, marketplace trust, and vendor compliance.
To solve this problem, mid-size and large companies often deploy teams across product, engineering, data science, and operations, and a stack of vendors to get the necessary business signals and increase coverage. Still, these companies require tens to hundreds of manual operators to review small and micro businesses that are partially or fully “invisible” to their vendors and annually see millions of dollars lost to customer friction, regulatory non-compliance, and fraud.
Mesh’s Business and Entity Verification solution combines privacy-centric data collection, hundreds of proprietary integrations with primary sources and real-time government data, an ecosystem of data partners, and identity lifecycle workflows to offer unmatched accuracy, data freshness, and non-compliance detection – while delivering high automation, conversion, and SMB satisfaction.
Mesh introduced the next evolution in its verification platform, offering:
- Multiple Signals: Mesh delivers signals including business user identity, licenses, insurance, tax information, business risk, end-user risk, and documentary evidence through a single API.
- Dynamic Data Capture: Mesh dynamically adapts its data capture experience to customers’ order parameters, end-user inputs, and real-time risk signals, ensuring a radically simple and tailored user-friendly experience.
- Real-Time Data: Mesh triangulates real-time verifications with hundreds of governments, third-party data, and partner networks, and delivers unmatched data freshness with risk labels for customers to automate decisions.
- Enterprise Platform: Mesh makes its data collection frictionless and transparent, tailored to customers’ needs with multiple fast-start options. Mesh is already trusted by multi-billion dollar marketplaces.
- Privacy by Design: Mesh secures data collected from SMBs with bank-level encryption and only shares it with their consent. Mesh is SOC2 Type II Certified.
“Business verification processes can take a day or more in 30%-plus of cases, and often, small businesses are simply invisible to single-point solution providers,” Asenjo said. “Companies must also integrate and triangulate with multiple disparate single-point solution providers for business, license, insurance, and other data – which is time-consuming to implement, customize, and maintain across platforms. And despite their efforts, companies suffer losses stemming from incomplete coverage and stale data.
“The response to verifications by Mesh from our community has been very positive, and we’re pleased with the increased engagement we’ve seen from verification,” Houzz senior product manager John Mannelly added. “Homeowners see the verification badge, which increases their trust and the likelihood of a connection. Our verified pros see higher quality leads and get more business. We’ve created a healthier ecosystem for our customers. Everyone wins here.”
The company recently added some seasoned executives to the mix. They are CRO Mike Nelson, who founded the identity verification business at Mitek and led revenue at BehavioSec (acquired by LexisNexis Risk Solutions); and Andres Benvenuto (VP of Partnerships & Data), who has more than 20 years of experience in data businesses like Socure, Dun & Bradstreet, and Creditsafe.
