Socure Acquires Berbix to Bulk Up ID Verification Toolbox

Digital identity provider Socure has paid $70 million to buy document verification startup Berbix.

The cash and stock transaction, announced Tuesday (June 27), allows Socure to integrate Berbix’s technology and unveil its Predictive Document Verification (DocV) 3.0 solution.

Based in San Francisco, Berbix offers a patent-pending forensics engine that can ferret out spoofed IDs — including artificial intelligence-generated fakes — that are “visually indistinguishable to the human eye,” Socure said in a news release. The deal marks the company’s first acquisition.

“There’s a perception among users that all document verification solutions perform the same, but after testing many offerings in the market, we found this to be categorically false,” Socure founder and CEO Johnny Ayers said in a news release.

“In fact, we found endless examples of other vendors in the market providing inaccurate stats that just couldn’t be validated, with inferior true accepts, true rejects and false accepts, along with substantially slower responses. I don’t blame users for their lack of faith here.”

Berbix, on the other hand, delivered “substantially better” results than promised, and with more speed and accuracy.

The news release notes that online ID verification has become increasingly crucial as consumers spend more time and money online, with accurate verification important for everything from eCommerce to virtual medical visits to mortage applications.

“We continue to see a hockey stick increase in digital identity information being compromised and used for synthetic identity fraud, account takeover fraud and other types of digital identity abuse,” Erika Dietrich, head of risk services for ACI Worldwide, told PYMNTS in May.

As PYMNTS has reported, there is a “greenfield opportunity” for providers and platforms to help automate verification of identities, payment details and accounts, with 42% of consumers saying they want to verify their identity every time they pay for a good or service.

However, many global businesses still have no access to the modern digital tools required to identify fraud vulnerabilities and mitigate their risks.

While 38% of businesses say they use document and identity authentication tools, PYMNTS research in the “B2B Payments Fraud Tracker” showed that 71% of businesses said they still need additional digital fraud solutions.

Earlier this year, Socure teamed up with payments FinTech Alacriti to block identity fraud in instant payments.

“Instant payments require real-time fraud prevention, which is not something many existing enterprise fraud systems are well-equipped to handle,” Mark Majeske, senior vice president of faster payments at Alacriti, said in a news release at the time.

The partnership gives financial institutions access to Socure’s fraud prevention solution, which is integrated with Cosmos, Alacriti’s payments hub.