World, the biometric ID company best known for its eyeball-scanning Orb devices, on Wednesday announced several partnerships aimed at driving sign-ups and demonstrating the applications of its tech.
World is partnering with Match Group, the dating app conglomerate, to verify the identities of Tinder users in Japan using World’s identity verification system. Additionally, World has established separate collaborations with both the prediction market startup Kalshi and the decentralized lending platform Morpho; these partnerships enable customers to sign in to these services using their IDs already registered with World. And World plans to team up with Visa to launch The World Card, a card that lets users spend digital assets anywhere Visa is accepted.
Since its founding in 2019, World, developed by San Francisco- and Berlin-based Tools for Humanity, has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and created digital IDs for millions of users. But it has yet to breach the mainstream, in part because of its cumbersome approach to verifying IDs.
With these new partnerships, World is going after a broader audience — one that previously might not have considered having their eyeballs scanned to verify their “humanness.”
The World Card is perhaps the most interesting of the new projects. Expected to become available in the U.S. later this year, it’ll connect to World’s World App and allow users to transact with cryptocurrencies. The card will automatically exchange crypto to fiat when needed, and potentially offer certain rewards for specific “AI subscriptions and services.”
World had one surprise in store at its Wednesday event: a collaboration with Stripe to allow users to pay with World on Stripe-enabled websites and apps. The company didn’t say when this might go live.
