Bionym Closes $14 Million Series A Round from Ignition, MasterCard and Relay Ventures

Bionym, creators of the Nymi Band authentication wristband, today announced that it has closed a US $14 million Series A round of funding led by Ignition Partners and Relay Ventures.

Other investors include Export Development Canada (EDC), MasterCard, and Salesforce Ventures, salesforce.com’s corporate investment group.

“This is a significant milestone for Bionym,” said Karl Martin, CEO and founder of Bionym. “We’re establishing the Nymi as the de facto platform for persistent, trusted identity, and this round of financing is providing us with the resources needed to bring the platform to market.”

“We continue to grow our world-class team, solving hard problems around persistent authentication, seamless and trusted interactions, and hyper-personalization of experiences. We’re at the forefront of a revolution in identity-based interactions with devices and services, and our momentum continues to grow with the support of our investors and strategic partners.”

Bionym have developed the Nymi band, a wearable device that provides persistent authenticated identity based on a user’s unique ECG. The company – which is growing rapidly and has close to 40 employees working out of a new office space in downtown Toronto – is continuing to draw top international talent to work on the Nymi and its ecosystem of services, applications, and integrations. Bionym is also continuing to build strategic partnerships across a variety of industries.

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“Bionym is playing an important role in driving the convergence of authentication and personalization,” said John Albright, co-founder and managing partner at Relay Ventures. “Bionym is a game-changer in that they are the only ones putting ownership of authentication into the hands of the consumer.” Relay Ventures was also an investor in Bionym’s seed round of funding.

“MasterCard and Salesforce have demonstrated a real commitment to our company and building on the Nymi platform,” said Andrew D’Souza, President of Bionym. “We’re excited to work with our rapidly expanding partner ecosystem to create trusted, personalized experiences for them, their customers and employees, and solve some of their most pressing business problems.”

Bionym has received more than 10,000 pre-orders for its Nymi Band, which will be released later this fall.