Handwave builds palm-recognition hardware and software aimed at faster, contactless checkout and retail identity verification (including age checks and loyalty programs). The company focuses specifically on retail deployments and has developed its own hardware and algorithms to compete on price. Handwave is preparing market pilots and is pursuing regulatory certifications while signing commercial partnerships with financial institutions. Its leadership team includes cofounders Janis Stirna and Sandis Osmanis-Usmanis, who previously worked at Worldline, and the company has an agreement with Visa to help accelerate deployments. R&D and early development were funded through bootstrapping, a $780,000 angel round, and $267,000 in non-equity support (an EU cybersecurity grant, Latvia’s LIAA Business Incubator, and the Ready2Scale accelerator). Handwave says merchants would pay a transaction fee on par with or lower than standard payments and plans to collaborate broadly with banks and acquirers as it scales from the EU toward other markets.

Total raised

$4M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Aug 2025