Rick Song, CEO of Persona, said on Jan. 12 that identity is essential in digital transactions, particularly when it comes to building trust and safety for deliveries and peer-to-peer transfers. The remarks address the growing reliance on automated identity verification tools as digital transactions expand and data privacy standards evolve.
Song made the statements in a Q&A published on Persona’s blog. He co-founded Persona in 2018 after working as an engineering manager at Square, where he built identity fraud and risk products. In April 2025, Persona raised $200 million in Series D funding at a $2 billion valuation. The company provides identity verification services in more than 200 countries and territories and states on its privacy page that it does not sell personal data or use it for AI or model training.
“We found identity was critical for anything from account recovery to verifying for fraud, or building trust and safety for a delivery, to ensuring there’s trust between two peers for transferring money. Traditional IDV workflows are also clunky, time-consuming, and non-secure — and often involve contractors manually verifying other individuals’ extremely personal information. More companies will move toward identity solutions that not only adapt to changing regulations but are also automatic, which provide a better user experience and are often better at safeguarding PII,” according to Song in the Q&A.
Federal contract records show that Palantir Technologies received a $30 million contract from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to develop a platform called ImmigrationOS for managing deportations. The New York City Comptroller requested an independent human rights risk assessment of Palantir’s work with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE. Persona’s Chief Operating Officer Christie Kim said in a customer email that the company does not work with ICE or any DHS agency and has no business or board connections with Palantir.
In February, the Federal Trade Commission issued a policy statement under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) that it would exercise enforcement discretion for operators using verification tools solely to determine age if data is not retained longer than necessary or used for other purposes. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said Reddit will use third-party verification tools to confirm accounts are human without collecting real-world identities. Persona complies with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), allows clients to set retention and deletion policies, and operates as a data processor verifying attributes such as age or humanness without exposing full identities.
Song previously worked about five years at Square building identity verification and fraud-prevention products. Persona was named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Identity Verification, positioned highest for Ability to Execute. Song holds a degree from the University of Waterloo.
