Just a week after its public unveiling, Facephi, the Alicante-based technology company, confirms a bold step into two Middle Eastern markets: the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. This move signals a strategic landing in the region, expanding its footprint beyond Europe and Asia and underscoring Facephi’s growth trajectory in digital identity verification and biometric solutions.
The agreement in question is with Qashio, a financial services platform that specializes in expense control and corporate card issuance. Listed on the BME Growth market, Facephi’s technology will be integrated into Qashio’s recruitment processes, digital recordkeeping, and customer identity verification workflows. The collaboration centers on deploying Facephi’s biometric identity solutions to streamline and secure the onboarding experience for Qashio’s regional clientele.
Qashio’s core service is to help businesses manage corporate card programs more efficiently, with better oversight of expenses and card issuance. By incorporating Facephi’s facial recognition technology, Qashio aims to elevate user experience and strengthen security as employees enroll and are authorized for corporate credit and debit cards. This aligns with broader fintech trends that emphasize seamless verification while maintaining robust compliance standards.
From a user perspective, the process is designed to be straightforward across languages and scripts. Mobile devices capture a photo of the user’s identity document, enabling Facephi’s system to read and verify data in both Latin and Arabic characters. Next, a selfie is taken so the biometric pattern of the face can be extracted and compared to the document photo, achieving a reliable identity verification step that supports multi-lingual operations in the region.
The contract marks a milestone for Facephi’s expansion through its private subsidiary focused on the EMEA region, known by its English acronym EMEA. This partnership is described by company leadership as a key component of the expansion strategy, especially after a year of focused efforts to promote solutions in the EMEA markets. Executives emphasize that signing this fintech deal in the region demonstrates progress toward broader international growth and ongoing penetration into new markets, including Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Enrico Montagnino, head of the EMEA department, frames the agreement as a tangible validation of the company’s regional strategy and long-term vision.
On the Qashio side, Jonathan Lau, co-founder and CPO, highlights Facephi as a trusted supplier that enables multilingual and multicultural service delivery. The collaboration is positioned as a step toward offering services in English and Arabic across multiple markets, while upholding global security and know your customer standards. Facephi’s biometric technology is expected to streamline processes, delivering faster and more agile identity verifications and reducing the risk of digital identity theft. The result is a smoother onboarding experience for clients and a fortified line of defense against fraud and impersonation in the digital arena.
Facephi’s expansion signals a broader growth pattern for the Alicante tech group
In recent years Facephi has demonstrated a strong revenue expansion and an ambitious geographic reach. The company closed the previous financial year with a turnover of 22.28 million euros, reflecting a substantial increase of 69 percent from the prior period. This momentum has been accompanied by strategic moves, including the opening of a regional branch and a significant capital infusion from an international investor. A recent arrangement with the Swiss investment fund Nice & Green has provided up to 20 million euros in liquidity to support expansion and growth initiatives. The funds are earmarked to fund expansion plans, including execution in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and North America, and to strengthen Facephi’s capacity to deploy its biometric identity tech at scale.
The capital injection is designed to accelerate Facephi’s geographic diversification and product deployments. As regional markets continue to adopt stronger digital identity controls, Facephi’s technology stands as a critical enabler for fintechs, banks, and corporate service providers seeking to modernize onboarding, compliance, and customer verification. This alignment with regional fintech ecosystems underscores Facephi’s commitment to delivering secure, user-friendly identity verification while navigating varied regulatory landscapes across territories.
Industry observers note that the company’s growth story is closely tied to the rising demand for robust biometric solutions in financial services, especially in areas with a mix of languages and scripts. Facephi’s approach to multilingual data capture and biometric matching supports regulated environments while offering a streamlined user experience. The collaboration with Qashio demonstrates a practical application of these capabilities, combining accessibility with security in a way that resonates with global standards for identity verification and anti-fraud measures. The broader implication is that Facephi is carving out a leadership position in the biometric identity space as fintechs expand into new geographies and customer segments.