Unico is an identity technology company that uses facial biometrics to verify and authenticate people online. Banks, retailers, fintechs, telecom companies and app providers use it to confirm that a real, physically present person is behind a sign-up, login or sensitive transaction.
Its products cover the identity lifecycle from first registration to repeat authentication: a selfie is checked for liveness, matched against identity documents and records, and turned into a reusable token so the same person can be recognised later without passwords.
At A Glance
| Vendor | Unico |
|---|---|
| Category | Biometric identity verification and authentication |
| Identities covered | Consumers and end users verified by selfie and document |
| Deployment | Cloud service integrated through an SDK and an onboarding integration |
| Customers | Plata |
| Funding | Series D led by Goldman Sachs (2022) |
| Market classification | Identity Verification |
What Unico Does
Account takeover, fake registrations and AI-generated fraud all depend on an attacker passing as someone else. Unico tackles this by checking the face in front of the camera. Its liveness check is built to stop spoofing, deepfakes, injection attacks, masks and AI-generated fraud before any match takes place.
Verification is only the first step. Once a person has been checked, Unico keeps no face photo: it holds a privacy-preserving token instead, so the business can recognise that person again at later visits without storing biometric images. The same approach supports identification across borders.
Products
Human Token
Human Token is aimed at consumer businesses that want to replace passwords and knowledge-based checks with a face. A selfie passes a liveness test, then becomes an anonymous token unique to each company; the same person always produces the same token, the face photo is deleted and the selfie cannot be rebuilt from it. The token is compared on every later visit, which helps with passwordless login, recovering a locked account, confirming high-risk actions and detecting duplicate or multiple accounts held by one person.
Unico Check
Unico Check is a facial biometric authentication service for onboarding and authenticating people in Brazil. It combines several checks that a customer can switch on for its own flow:
| Authentication Score | A 1:N check of a selfie and CPF number against Unico and public databases at first registration |
|---|---|
| Biometric Token | A 1:1 check against the existing record from the second registration onward |
| SmartLive | Proof-of-life detection that asks the person to move towards the camera |
| Document typing, OCR and OCRCode (CPF Match) | Automated reading and classification of RG, CNH and CRM documents, with CPF matching |
| Facematch | Compares the selfie with the photo printed on the document |
Unico Biometry And Unico Liveness
These cloud-based products provide facial recognition and anti-spoofing for online identity verification. They are built for lenders and other regulated businesses that need a fast know-your-customer (KYC) step inside a digital application flow.
How It Works
Unico Check is set up on the Unico service platform and then embedded in the customer’s own web and mobile applications.
| Component | What it does |
|---|---|
| SDK | The software development kit runs in the customer’s app and captures the selfie and document images. |
| Integration (Onboarding) | This component receives all the information related to the captured images and passes it to Unico for processing in its cloud service. |
| Service platform | Customers choose which checks, such as Authentication Score or SmartLive, apply to their flow. Unico Biometry and Unico Liveness follow the same cloud model. |
Identities And Systems Covered
| Consumers and end users | People verified by selfie, liveness and document checks. |
|---|---|
| Brazilian identity documents | RG, CNH and CRM documents, read by OCR, plus CPF matching. |
| Reference records | Unico and public databases used for the Authentication Score. |
| Customer applications | Web and mobile apps that embed the SDK. |
Company Background
| Founded | 2007, by Diego Martins, who is also CEO. |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Founded in São Paulo, Brazil; a new global headquarters opened in Menlo Park, California, in April 2026. |
| Presence | More than 20 countries. |
| Funding | $100 million in April 2022, with SoftBank and General Atlantic also investing, at a reported $2.6 billion valuation. |
| Acquisitions | MakroSystems, a developer of transaction security for web and mobile channels, for R$ 150 million (2022); Trully and Oz Forensics (2024); OwnID, a US startup specialising in passwordless and passkey authentication (2025). |
Note: This overview is compiled from Unico’s publicly available information as of 3 November 2026. It is provided for information only. NHI Mgmt Group does not endorse any vendor, and nothing on this page represents the opinions of NHI Mgmt Group.