Veriff and Preply: keeping the world’s largest language learning marketplace safe on both sides

How Preply screens more than 150,000 tutors, keeps learners safe, and protects the money its tutors earn with Veriff.

About Preply

Preply is one of the leading online language learning marketplace. Founded in 2012 by Kirill Bigai and Dmytro Voloshyn, the company began as a single landing page built by a small team in Kyiv and has grown into a global platform that connects learners one-on-one with human tutors.

Today, Preply has more than 150,000 tutors from 180 countries, teaching 90 languages and over 120 subjects. The marketplace has expanded well beyond languages into maths, physics, computer science, and more. Millions of learners use the platform, and over 1,000 companies rely on Preply Business to upskill their employees. The company has grown to 800+ employees across four global hubs in New York, London, Kyiv, and Barcelona.

In January 2026, Preply reached unicorn status, raising a $150 million Series D led by WestCap at a $1.2 billion valuation.

For many tutors, Preply is not a side project. It is their primary income. And for learners, often growth-minded professionals relocating for work, a language can be the difference between one career and another.

Igor Kasianov has been with Preply for eight years, joining when the company was around 100 people. As Director of Engineering, he now owns the architecture of Preply’s applications and leads its transformation toward an AI-driven development lifecycle.

What business problems did Veriff solve for Preply?

A two-sided marketplace where one side earns money creates a specific set of risks, and Preply needed to address several of them at once.

• Sanctions and global compliance. As a US-registered company, Preply must be certain it is not providing services in sanctioned countries.
• Learner safety. Lessons are delivered over live video, making trust and authenticity important to the integrity of our marketplace. Identity verification helps us confirm that tutors are who they say they are, and supports a trusted learning environment for learners and tutors.
• Anti-money laundering. Preply facilitates payments between learners and tutors. Those flows have to be screened.
• Payment fraud. Stolen credit cards used to fund lessons and then withdraw money out of the system.
• Know who you are paying. Before any tutor provides a service or receives a payout, Preply needs to confirm who they actually are.

All of these checks run before a tutor starts teaching or takes money off the platform.

What made the difference to Preply when choosing Veriff?

As their marketplace grew, Preply recognized an opportunity to strengthen their approach to identity verification. They moved to Veriff because of its more sophisticated verification capabilities, giving them additional tools to assess identity documents and confirm tutor identities at scale.

Because Preply is a data-driven organization, it did not simply swap vendors. It ran the evaluation as an A/B test, putting the two providers side by side on live traffic and comparing them directly. Fraud pass rate was the primary metric, and the results were decisive. Preply completed the migration to Veriff around three years ago.

As Igor Kasianov explains: “We are data-driven, so we ran it as an A/B test and compared the two providers. The fraud pass rate was the main factor — and the problem was solved. We have been using Veriff for about three years now.”

Engineering led the integration, but the decision was not made in isolation. Preply’s legal team was a core decision-maker, defining which checks were required, with finance assessing the unit economics.

Rather than stitching together point solutions, Preply buys Veriff as a package. Identity and document verification, alongside sanctions and adverse media screening, and anti-money laundering checks, all delivered through a single workflow.

More recently, Preply enabled recurring checks, so screening is not a one-time gate at onboarding. Tutors are automatically re-screened on a set cadence, with Veriff maintaining the record.

What was the impact of implementing Veriff?

The immediate result was stronger protection against attempted identity fraud, with Veriff’s technology providing more sophisticated document authentication and identity verification capabilities.

The second effect was harder to put a single number on but no less valuable: compliance confidence. As Preply has scaled, it has faced more audits and more controls. Being able to demonstrate robust sanctions and anti-money laundering screening changes the conversation — for regulators, for partners, and for Preply’s own legal team.

Igor Kasianov says that their fraud protection and compliance have significantly improved. He notes that as the company grows, it faces more audits and controls, and being able to demonstrate protection against money laundering and other risks has given their legal team much greater confidence.

For a marketplace built on strangers meeting over video, that confidence flows in both directions. Learners can trust the person teaching them. Tutors can trust the platform holding their earnings.

What does the future hold for Preply?

Preply is now extending Veriff beyond onboarding and into account protection. Tutors accumulate real balances on the platform, and Preply is adding biometric authentication as a second factor at the point of withdrawal. So that, when money leaves an account, the platform can confirm it is the genuine owner requesting it.

With that integration underway, Preply is also looking at the wider Veriff product range for what comes next.