Mistho
Mistho provides an Open Payroll API for instant employment and income verification, serving fintech, financial services, rental platforms, and HR tech providers with privacy-first, one-time credential access to payroll data of 500M+ consumers across 10+ geographies.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2021
- HeadquartersLondon, United Kingdom
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Mistho does
Mistho is a London-headquartered (Mistho Services Limited, company number 13636487), venture-backed fintech founded in Berlin in October 2021 that operates an Open Payroll API for instant employment and income verification. It serves financial services providers (banks, mortgage brokers, lenders, credit institutions), rental platforms and landlords, background check / HR tech firms, and fintech / SaaS platforms that need verified, granular income and employment data to power underwriting, tenant screening, hiring, and consumer credit decisions - use cases where traditional document uploads, open banking rails, or credit-bureau reports have proven too slow, fraud-prone, or insufficiently detailed.
The core technology is a session-based, privacy-first verification flow: Mistho retrieves payroll data directly from employer portals and (in the UK) authoritative HMRC records via its sub-processor untied (UT Tax Ltd), returning standardized JSON output plus original payslip PDFs in under 15 seconds. Security architecture is built around RSA 4096 encryption, SHA-256 signing, Ed25519 cryptographic attestation, AWS KMS, and kubeseal secret management, with credentials never stored and each access one-time only. The Mistho Passport Chrome extension adds a credential-free extraction path from official government portals. Mistho was the first UK-market player to achieve ISO 27001 certification (December 2022) and is certified as a UK DIATF Attribute Service Provider (November 2024).
Mistho's revenue model combines three tiers: a free developer sandbox, pay-per-use API calls (for applications under 2,000 calls/month), and enterprise SaaS subscriptions with minimum monthly fees, white-label options, and dedicated account management. The GTM motion is API-first and developer-centric, complemented by a strategic channel partnership with Veremark (announced June 2024) that embeds Mistho's API into a global background check platform for Instant Employment Reports. Coverage spans more than 500 million consumers across 10+ geographies. The company is registered with the UK ICO (ZB253263), GDPR compliant, and has raised €3M in seed funding (March 2022) led by Lightbird Ventures with Global Founders Capital, Flash Ventures, Nauta Capital, Fin VC and supporting angels.
Mistho firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Mistho
- Legal name
- Mistho Services Limited
- Website
- https://mistho.io
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2021
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Mistho provides an Open Payroll API for instant employment and income verification, serving fintech, financial services, rental platforms, and HR tech providers with privacy-first, one-time credential access to payroll data of 500M+ consumers across 10+ geographies.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Mistho industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Employment and Income Verification API
- NAICS
- Payroll Services (541214), Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and Payroll Services (54121)
- SIC
- Services-Employment Agencies (7361)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Payroll Software & Payroll-as-a-Service (SaaS) (BPACAIAB)
Keywords
Where Mistho is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- London
- HQ country
- United Kingdom
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices3 records
Markets served
Mistho business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- Pay-Per-Use API Calls: Mistho charges a fixed fee per successful API call for applications with fewer than 2,000 API calls per month. This is a usage-based, consumption model where only successful verifications are charged. Scales with customer usage.
- Enterprise SaaS + Per-Call Fees: For enterprise customers, Mistho offers a SaaS subscription component with lower per-API-call costs, plus minimum monthly SaaS fees. This creates a land-and-expand revenue dynamic where higher-volume enterprise clients generate more predictable recurring SaaS revenue alongside variable usage fees.
- Sandbox / Free Tier: Free sandbox access is provided for developers to build and test integrations. This supports a freemium-like motion where developers adopt the product at no cost, then convert to paid tiers as their applications go live and scale.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Pay-as-you-go | Sandbox — free of charge for development and testing |
| Usage-based | Pay-as-you-go | Pay Per Use — fixed fee per successful API call for lower-volume applications |
| Hybrid | Monthly | Enterprise Grade — SaaS + fee per call for high-volume enterprise customers |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels3 records
Marketing channels5 records
Mistho product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Mistho provides an Open Payroll API that enables instant, consent-driven employment and income verification by accessing consumer payroll account data directly from employer portals and authoritative government systems (e.g., HMRC via untied). The platform delivers verified, up-to-date data — including identity, employment details, income summary, and payslips — as standardized JSON plus original PDF documents in under 15 seconds, with one-time session-based access for user privacy. Coverage spans 500M+ consumers across 10+ geographies via a single API integration, with a free sandbox, pay-per-use pricing, and enterprise SaaS subscriptions.
Product overview
Mistho is a single unified product platform providing global instant employment and income verification services. The core offering is the Mistho Open Payroll API, which integrates via a single API call to access employment and income records from over 500 million consumers across multiple geographies. The platform consists of the main verification product, Configuration APIs for customizing the app experience, the Mistho Passport Chrome extension for government portal verification, and a Sandbox environment for testing. Mistho also offers Instant Employment Reports through a strategic partnership with Veremark for background screening use cases. All components share the same API infrastructure and deliver standardized JSON output with original PDF documents.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Mistho Passport: A Chrome extension that lets users verify their own employment or income directly from official government portals without sharing sign-in credentials
Products and services
- Mistho Open Payroll API (Core Product) Global instant employment and income verification API providing access to income and employment records of more than 500 million consumers across 10+ geographies via a single API integration. Uses a session-based one-time verification approach where users grant one-time access to their payroll data, which is retrieved and delivered in standardized JSON format along with original PDF documents. For fintech, financial service providers, rental platforms, and background screening providers.
- Mistho Passport (Chrome Extension) Chrome browser extension that enables users to verify their own employment or income directly from official government portals without sharing sign-in credentials. Reads only the specific employment/income fields needed for verification and cryptographically signs data with Ed25519 for tamper-evidence.
- Instant Employment Reports Collaborative product with Veremark providing instant employment verification for background screening solutions. Generates immediate work histories to enable faster hiring decisions. Available for UK candidates initially, with planned expansion to other geographies.
- Mistho Sandbox Free testing environment providing instant access for developers to build and test their product integration with Mistho's API before going live.
Quantifiable outcome
- Data retrieval in under 15 seconds — enabling near-instant verification vs. traditional multi-day processes
- +3 more outcomes
Companies that use Mistho
Customer profileNamed customers1 record
Segments4 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
Mistho technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
AI capability3 records
Feature9 records
Mistho partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Two partnerships are on record, tiered core.
- VeremarkcoreStrategic partnership between Mistho and Veremark for global background check solutions. The first product — Instant Employment Reports — has launched, enabling Veremark to offer instant employment verification powered by Mistho's API. Available for UK candidates initially, with expansion to other geographies planned. Mistho's Maximilian Czymoch (co-founder & CEO) and Veremark's Dan Braithwaite (co-founder & CPO) publicly announced the partnership, marking a key GTM milestone for Mistho's international expansion through a channel partner.
- untied (UT Tax Ltd)coreuntied acts as Mistho's sub-processor for retrieving authoritative HMRC employment and income data. Users authorize untied directly through HMRC's Government Gateway or GOV.UK One Login, and untied returns the consented data points via API to Mistho for transmission to the Partner. Neither Mistho nor untied have access to user's HMRC login credentials. This is a critical data source partnership enabling authoritative income verification in the UK.
Scale indicators6 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Mistho competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Plaid: Plaid is a leading financial data connectivity platform offering income and employment verification APIs (Plaid Income, Plaid Auth). It competes directly with Mistho in providing developer-first APIs for income verification to fintechs and lenders, though via Open Banking rails rather than payroll-portal scraping.
- Tink (Visa): Tink, owned by Visa, is a European open banking platform offering account information, payment initiation, and increasingly income verification data. It is a relevant competitor in the UK and EU where Mistho also operates, with a regulated open-banking-rails approach.
- Truework: Truework provides an employment and income verification API for lenders, mortgage providers, and background screening platforms. It is a direct competitor in the same product category (income/employment verification API), with similar B2B SaaS and usage-based revenue model.
- Yapily: Yapily is a UK/EU open banking API platform offering account information and income data for lenders, lenders, and fintechs. It competes with Mistho in the UK for income verification use cases via regulated open-banking rails rather than payroll scraping.
- Argyle: Argyle offers a real-time income and employment verification API connecting directly to payroll source systems, closely mirroring Mistho's 'Open Payroll' approach. Targets the same customer base (lenders, proptech, gig platforms) with a comparable pay-per-call revenue model.
- Pinwheel: Pinwheel provides payroll connectivity APIs for income verification, earned wage access, and direct deposit switching. Like Mistho, it focuses on payroll-source-data APIs for fintechs, with a developer-first, usage-based pricing model.
Broad incumbents
- Checkr: Checkr is a large background check platform that includes employment verification as part of its broader screening suite. It is a relevant incumbent for Mistho's Veremark partnership motion and competes for HR tech and screening budget.
Emerging players
- Onfido: Onfido provides identity verification and is increasingly adding income/attribute services (now part of Entrust). It is a comparable UK-headquartered attribute service provider moving into adjacent income-verification use cases.
- Atomic (Financial Data): Atomic provides payroll connectivity and financial account data APIs for US fintechs, including income and employment verification. It targets similar developer and lender customers with a comparable API-first GTM.
Others
- Veremark: Veremark is Mistho's strategic channel partner for background checks and is also a partial competitor as an employment screening platform embedding (rather than building) verification rails. Comparable use case, customer segment, and product motion.
Market position
Strengths1 record
Weaknesses1 record
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
Mistho social profiles
Digital presenceMistho compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance5 records
Mistho financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Mistho leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles1 record
Mistho funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds2 records
Investors5 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Mistho M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Mistho
What does Mistho do?
Mistho provides an Open Payroll API that enables instant, consent-driven employment and income verification by accessing consumer payroll account data directly from employer portals and authoritative government systems (e.g., HMRC via untied). The platform delivers verified, up-to-date data — including identity, employment details, income summary, and payslips — as standardized JSON plus original PDF documents in under 15 seconds, with one-time session-based access for user privacy. Coverage spans 500M+ consumers across 10+ geographies via a single API integration, with a free sandbox, pay-per-use pricing, and enterprise SaaS subscriptions.
Is Mistho a public or private company?
Mistho is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Mistho founded?
Mistho was founded in 2021. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Mistho based?
Mistho is headquartered in London, United Kingdom, in the Europe region.
How does Mistho make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. Pay-Per-Use API Calls are the primary driver. The others are enterprise SaaS + Per-Call Fees and sandbox / Free Tier.
Who are Mistho's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Plaid, Tink (Visa), Truework, Yapily, Argyle and Pinwheel. Checkr is listed as a broad incumbent. Emerging players are Onfido and Atomic (Financial Data). Veremark is listed as an others.
Does Mistho have an API?
Yes. Mistho is an API-first company offering an Open Payroll API for income and employment verification. The API enables developers to integrate instant income and employment verification into their applications. Implementation involves a 3-step process: (1) call the API using a backend to generate a transaction_id, (2) call the backend to retrieve the transaction_id, (3) initialize the Mistho app window. The API provides standard JSON output with all verification data, along with original documents in PDF format. A sandbox environment is available for free testing with instant access. Configuration APIs allow clients to configure the app to their UX and business needs, including custom logos, redirection URLs, callback URLs, and payslip month requirements. Developer documentation is at mistho.readme.io/reference/configurations.
What industry is Mistho in?
Mistho's product category is Employment and Income Verification API. Its primary akta.pro industry code is BPACAIAB, Payroll Software & Payroll-as-a-Service (SaaS). Its NAICS code is 541214 and its SIC code is 7361.