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Persona

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  • Type: Identity-verification software company (Persona Identities, Inc.), selling government-ID, selfie, database and watchlist checks through an API.
  • Founded: 2018, by Rick Song and Charles Yeh; based in San Francisco.
  • Pandemic role: Automated identity checks on PPP applicants for Square Capital and for Womply's Fast Lane platform, where Womply called it its "primary KYC vendor"; not a lender and not an eligibility decision-maker.
  • Current status: Venture-backed; announced a $200 million Series D at a $2 billion valuation on April 30, 2025.
  • Related article: Persona: The Configurable Identity Layer

Pandemic-role map

  • Reader shorthand: the identity check at the front of two fintech PPP pipelines.
  • What Persona did for applicants: asked them for a government ID and a live selfie, and checked their details against databases and sanctions lists before their application went further.
  • What Persona sold to other companies: configurable identity verification, including government-ID checks, selfie liveness, database checks, watchlist screening and device signals.
  • Where responsibility sat: Square Capital and Womply chose how to use Persona's results; lenders such as Celtic Bank (for Square) and Womply's partner lenders made the loans.

Before the pandemic

Rick Song and Charles Yeh founded Persona in 2018, according to Contrary Research; before that they were engineers who led the identity teams at Square and Dropbox. In January 2020 the company announced a $17.5 million Series A from investors including Coatue and First Round Capital, describing itself as an identity-verification start-up "on a mission to secure every internet transaction."

During the pandemic

Square Capital. Persona's customer story on Square Capital, in our June 2026 copy, says Square "partnered with Persona to automate the identity verification of PPP loan applicants." It puts the count at "10,000+ businesses automatically verified." It quotes Audrey Kim, head of product at Square Capital: "Persona was invaluable in helping ensure tens of thousands of small businesses could have a smooth, transparent, and efficient PPP funding process through Square Capital." The page's fine print says Square Capital's loans were issued by Celtic Bank.

Womply. Womply's developer order form with the lender Benworth Capital, effective April 14, 2021, names Persona among the "Third-Party Providers" built into its PPP platform. Womply's "PPP Fast Lane Data Collection Overview" for the loan agent Blueacorn, updated May 11, 2021, gives the most detail. "Womply uses Persona as the primary KYC vendor for our lenders," it says. Persona ran a database lookup on date of birth, Social Security number and name, a sanctions and watchlist check including OFAC, government-ID authentication and a video selfie. It automatically declined applicants using foreign IP addresses, proxies, VPNs or Tor, applicants with expired IDs, those who used more than three devices, and any selfie that failed its liveness check. Womply passed an application on only if Persona had "Approved" it. The overview also says Womply's own reviewers declined applications that "slipped through," giving the example that "animations, deep fakes, and other info may be 'Approved' by Persona's automated review but declined by Womply's KYC team."

The arbitrator in Womply's dispute with Benworth found that Womply's technology "verified identity using Persona" and that Womply paid its providers. Womply's July 2024 amended complaint against Benworth lists four Persona checks: government IDs, biometric selfie scans, database identity checks, and screening for OFAC sanctions and politically exposed persons. The complaint says not every service applied to every application; that is Womply's pleading.

Persona also appears in a PPP prosecution. For an October 2024 PPP fraud trial in federal court in Miami, United States v. Wade, prosecutors listed a Persona Identities employee among their proposed witnesses, alongside a former Womply employee.

The SBA's public PPP data list no loan to Persona Identities, Inc.

After the pandemic

Persona raised a $50 million Series B led by Index Ventures in May 2021. In September 2021 it closed a $150 million Series C led by Founders Fund at a $1.5 billion valuation, bringing its total raised to $217.5 million. On April 30, 2025 it announced a $200 million Series D co-led by Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital at a $2 billion valuation. That release pitched Persona as a "verified identity layer" for a world of AI agents, with Rick Song as chief executive. In a 2024 opinion in Washington v. Persona Identities, an Illinois appeals court ruled that Persona could not force DoorDash drivers into arbitration. The drivers had sued under the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act over selfie checks Persona ran for DoorDash. The ruling decided only the arbitration question, not the privacy claims.

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