Online security is perhaps more important than ever, as we’ve seen with so many high profile breaches in recent years, but it actually seems harder than ever to actually manage it, with so many passwords to remember and more information going online.
That is where password security platform Dashlane comes in. The company helps users manage passwords, credit cards, IDs, and other important information via encryption and local storage, and now it has raised $22.5 million in a Series C round of funding, it was announced on Wednesday.
The round was led by credit monitoring and identity protection company TransUnion, and included participation from previous investors Rho Ventures, FirstMark Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners.
This is the first funding that the company has raised since its $22 million Series B round in May of 2014. This round brings Dashlane’s total funding to $52.5 million.
The New York City-based Dashlane does two things: it allows users to automate registration, login and checkout on all websites, and across all platforms by securely storing information such as passwords, credit cards, IDs and notes. At the same time, it also generates a new, unique and strong password every time a user creates a new account on a website.
The service is a mix of convenience and security, because the app will automatically fill out a user’s credit card and other information when they are making an e-commerce checkout, and create a new password for every website.
Dashlane helps more than five million consumers in over 150 countries manage their digital identities. The company has also facilitated $6 billion in e-commerce transactions to date.
The will use the funding for more services around payments and checkout, “as these are areas of our business that will be growing in the next 12 months,” Emmanuel Schalit, CEO of Dashlane, told me.
It will also be used to funding to expand further into the enterprise world of password and identity management, as well as geographic expansion.
“Geographic expansion will be truly worldwide in the sense that we’re looking to become even more of global company, so there isn’t a solitary market and/or country we’re focused on,” he said.
“This year we added give more languages to Dashlane and adding more geographic compatibility will be a priority for the company moving forward. Lastly, we will continue to improve our best-in-class user experience by growing our Product and Engineering teams.”
The company currently has 115 employees.
One of the biggest differentiators our product has, as has been noted by a variety of outlets, is the user experience is easy to understand and gorgeous across all of our platforms, including Mac, PC, iOS, and Android. A great user experience is at the core of any great technology company and we’ll continue to provide our users products and features at the standards they demand,” Schalit said.
Along with its investment in Dashlane, TransUnion has also partnered with the company, to “create innovative services for their respective customers.”
The services will focus on credit monitoring, identity and fraud protection, credit information and breaches. Also, TransUnion will work with Dashlane to expand its distribution through TransUnion’s multiple partner channels in the U.S. and globally.
Dashlane has been expanding its partnership network, particularly with large financial institutions. including Banamex, the largest bank in Mexico and a subsidiary of Citigroup.
“The first officially launched partnership is with Banamex, the largest bank in Mexico. We’re in numerous discussions with larger financial institutions and payments providers and you can expect additional announcements this year,”
In addition to the funding, it was also announced that Dashlane will be adding two new members to its Board of Directors.
John Danaher, president of TransUnion Consumer Interactive, will join Dashlane’s board, along with Carl Pascarella, former CEO of Visa, who has joined its board as an independent director.
“John is the President of the Consumer Division of TransUnion. He knows a lot about how consumers relate to, and interact with, Financial Services and Identity. He will also make sure that the many partnership opportunities between Dashlane and TransUnion are well resourced within his organizations,” Schalit told me.
“Carl immediately understood the potential we had to make the online checkout process easier and more secure. He has decades of experience in the financial services world, including 12 years as CEO of VISA, so his unique network will allow us to make a major impact in the financial services world.”
Ultimately, Dashlane’s goal is to be the place for users to protect their digital identity.
“2 billion people use the Internet every day. In spite of that, 25 years after the creation of the Internet, there is still no universal system for digital identity. We constantly need to type, manage remember, names addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, passwords, to the point that life in the digital world is more complicated and less secure than in the real world. That is why we created Dashlane.”
