ICONLOOP Raises a Bridge Round, Bringing Cumulative Investment to Around KRW 16 Billion
- – MyID-based service to launch in the third quarter of this year
July 3, 2020, Seoul — ICONLOOP (CEO JH Kim), a leading Korean blockchain company, announced that it has raised a bridge round of KRW 6 billion, bringing cumulative investment to around KRW 16 billion. In October last year, ICONLOOP had raised a KRW 10 billion Series A round, its first investment from an outside institution since the company was founded.
Seven investors took part in the round: Korea Growth Investment Corporation, Kiwoom Investment, Danal Holdings, K Clavis Investment, TS Investment, Korea Asset Investment Securities, and Pathfinder H. Among them, Korea Growth Investment Corporation had recently made a direct investment after selecting ICONLOOP as one of the target companies of its KRW 120 billion Fintech Innovation Fund, and it led this round on the strength of its high assessment of ICONLOOP's growth potential ahead of the launch of the company's MyID-based service.
TS Investment and Korea Asset Investment Securities, which also led the round, showed their confidence in ICONLOOP by investing again following the Series A. Danal Holdings and Kiwoom Investment, which joined as strategic investors, plan to explore new business opportunities through various forms of collaboration with ICONLOOP and its distinctive technology and services.
Having successfully closed the bridge round on top of the Series A and secured around KRW 16 billion in cumulative investment, ICONLOOP is focusing on launching services built on MyID, its own DID platform. Slated for commercial release in the third quarter, the service is built on MyID — designated an Innovative Financial Service by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) — and can be used for any financial service requiring identity verification. The MyID Alliance, which is working to build a trusted digital ID ecosystem around MyID, currently has about 70 institutions and companies as partners across fields including commercial banks, securities firms, e-commerce companies, and manufacturers. The identity verification process that must currently be carried out separately at each financial institution will change so that, within the MyID Alliance, a single initial verification can be used everywhere.
"We focused on the fact that this is a technology company holding the only DID solution in the financial industry that can be adopted immediately, thanks to its designation as an innovative financial service provider," a representative of Korea Growth Investment Corporation said. "We also see it as an investment that fits the purpose behind the Fintech Innovation Fund — promoting connections with a range of financial institutions."
"We think highly of ICONLOOP's capabilities in technology and services in blockchain, regarded as a core technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution," a representative of Kiwoom Investment said. "Its MyID-based service, expected to be an innovative offering, will combine with various services such as Saramin HR under the Daou Kiwoom Group to innovate the market and create new value."
"We made this investment because we judged that, as ICONLOOP expands into a range of payment businesses in future, collaboration with Danal's integrated payment platform can generate powerful synergy on the back of its proven technology and network," a representative of Danal Holdings said.
"Launching a service built on MyID, which concentrates ICONLOOP's proprietary DID technology, will be an important turning point in leading the broader shift toward realizing self-sovereign ID systems," said ICONLOOP CEO JH Kim. "At a time when the need for highly trustworthy identity verification has grown, we plan to take the lead in the market starting with the financial sector, then gradually broaden the scope of businesses applying DID and expand our revenue."
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