Identity verification firm Hello Soda has been acquired by a counterpart headquartered in Los Angeles.
The Manchester company, which is focused on the European and Asian markets, has been snapped up for an undisclosed sum by Acuant.
Acuant is a global identity platform for fraud prevention and anti-money laundering compliance which has completed more than 1.5 billion transactions in over 200 countries and territories across all major industries.
It said that along with Hello Soda’s deep expertise in eMoney and gaming, with customers including VirginBet, Klarna and Paysafe, the union will bring together powerful technology and data science capabilities that are key to unlocking trust in digital identities.
“Our goal has always been to power trust for all, a vision we share with Hello Soda whom we are excited to welcome to the Acuant family,” said Yossi Zekri President and CEO of Acuant.
“This is truly the most exhilarating time in our company’s history, coinciding with the disruption of traditional financial markets, the rapid digitalization of the world and the need for business and governments to help safeguard identity more than ever before.
“Adding Hello Soda to our Trusted Identity Platform will reach more people today and position us even stronger for the future of digital identity.”
Hello Soda’s suite of solutions leverage digital data sources and capabilities for the purpose of KYC and AML.
With a strong focus on ensuring businesses receive actionable insight, Hello Soda’s technology utilises proprietary analytics, matching algorithms and data science modelling to provide configurable and composite scoring, enabling businesses to make trusted decisions from the point of onboarding to enhanced due diligence (EDD) and continuous monitoring.
Its dark web solution mitigates the risk of impersonation fraud by searching over 600 million records on the dark web for a customer’s information and provides an extra level of security by searching and monitoring customer PII against compromised data.
Its multilingual platform has enabled Hello Soda to become a market leader in automated identity solutions, currently verifying identities in over 180 countries.
“We could not be happier to join Acuant, bringing our talent, technology, network and expertise to strengthen all we have accomplished and to take our mutual vision further as a team,” stated James Blake, Founder and CEO of Hello Soda.
“Our combined technology will serve us well in our joint mission to democratize trust and provide solutions to reach every sector of the global population, allowing every individual to conduct trusted transactions when and where they wish.”