With the advent of flexible workspaces, companies are increasingly adopting smartphone-based authentication to let employees enter and leave. In a recent poll, nearly two in five firms said they’re letting staff use their phones to access office buildings.
The boon has benefited vendors like SwiftConnect, which sells a platform for managing access to physical offices. Chris Kruger and Matt Kopel founded the company in 2020 after selling their previous company, Waltz, to WeWork in 2019.
Kopel says he had the idea for SwiftConnect while at WeWork, where he briefly worked after the Waltz acquisition. The on-demand, mobile-centric access control WeWork wanted, he believed, was going to become the standard for many offices going forward.
SwiftConnect’s platform is designed to abstract away access management for office spaces. Using the service, employees can add their employee badge to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet on their smartphones. Once added, the digital badge gives them access to enter their building and/or shared amenity spaces secured by NFC door locks.
From a dashboard, admins can issue credentials so that employees can enter only approved rooms.
SwiftConnect isn’t the first to market with a mobile-centric access control management platform. Openpath, Kisi and Verkada, among others, offer software to replace physical access cards with personal devices.
But Kruger asserts that SwiftConnect is one of the few that doesn’t require companies to install new reader hardware. That has helped it win clients like Silverstein Properties, which owns 7 World Trade Center in New York City, Kruger says.
SwiftConnect, which claims its system is live in over 100 million square feet of office space, said last year that it didn’t expect to need to raise additional capital “unless strategic opportunities presented themselves.”
It seems like those strategic opportunities presented themselves. SwiftConnect this month raised $37 million in a Series B round led by Quadri Ventures, with participation from HID, Egis Capital Partners, Klingenstein Fields Advisors, Crow Holdings, JLL Spark, Navitas Capital and Spring Rock Capital.
“To address any potential headwinds, we decided to raise more than enough funding to weather any upcoming economic storms,” Kruger said.
The new cash, which brings the startup’s total capital raised to $74 million, will be put toward growing the company’s 135-person team and expanding to new geographies, Kopel says. SwiftConnect has offices in Montreal and Stamford, currently.
Strategic acquisitions are on the table as well; last year, SwiftConnect used a portion of its warchest to buy Detrios, an access control firm.
“SwiftConnect is extending our expertise into the high-end, multi-family rental market, and has completed deployments in this space,” Kruger said. “We’re helping enable self-service, unfettered access to parking garages, buildings, turnstiles, office suites, and amenity spaces for tenants across their portfolio of properties.”
While it’s growing at a healthy clip, SwiftConnect faces potential headwinds. Mobile-centric access control systems can leave workers in a lurch if their smartphones shut down. And systems such as SwiftConnect’s have raised privacy concerns.
A Business Insider piece notes that firms including PwC, Amazon and Goldman Sachs are using badges to record employees’ working locations. According to one recent survey, 62% of organizations plan to use badge swipes to track attendance.
It’ll be incumbent on SwiftConnect to show it can deliver convenience without undue surveillance.
“Our platform is founded on a privacy-by-design principle where we collect the minimal amount of user information necessary to operate the service,” Kruger said. “Our customers retain full control over user data we process on their behalf.”
