GBG adds Acuant’s selfie biometrics and Trusted Identity Platform with $736M deal

Acuant is the latest biometric identity verification provider to be snapped up, in a $736 million deal with GBG the latter expects to accelerate its global growth.

The companies are long-time partners, and Acuant’s face biometrics and product suite are a natural compliment to the U.S.-based services GBG picked up when it acquired IDology in early 2019. This regional positioning combined with a combined product portfolio GBG describes as the industry’s best from end-to-end will support both companies existing partner and customer networks and accelerate the rollout of GBG digital identity and fraud protection solutions globally, according to the announcement.

Acuant’s Trusted Identity Platform includes a powerful orchestration layer, GBG says, and an easy-to-configure journey builder to enable seamless integration of data, documents, biometrics and analytics for use across the customer lifecycle. This includes onboarding, step-up authentication, know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) compliance, fraud and risk analysis, real-time monitoring, and identity re-use.

“The combination of our two businesses is a complementary and powerful one. Together we create a global leader in data, document and biometric identity verification services and strengthen our mutual capability to capitalise on the fast-growing identity fraud market,” comments GBG CEO Chris Clarke.

The combined companies have a massive footprint in the digital identity space, bringing in combined revenues of approximately £265 million (roughly US$358 million), and GBG emphasizes the opportunity it creates in the lucrative U.S. market.

“The U.S. is the largest and most strategic market for location, identity and fraud services,” Clarke notes in the announcement. “The combination of GBG and Acuant provides a step-change in this market, increasing scale, growing our customer base and introducing us to new and exciting sectors. As importantly, it also strengthens the breadth of our technology portfolio which we can use to support our current customers in new ways in growth geographies such as APAC and Europe where we already have a strong footprint.”

“This is an exciting day for Acuant. We are very proud of everything that Acuant has achieved to date – building a world-class technology portfolio and a strong market position across multiple sectors,” adds Acuant CEO Yossi Zekri. “There is still significant opportunity ahead and joining the GBG family is the best way for us to capitalise on those opportunities. Our customer, technology and geographical mix are complementary and culturally we are aligned in our mission, vision, and how we invest in our people and look after our customers. We are very much looking forward to working together in the years ahead.”

The announcement appears to indicate that Acuant’s team and channel partner network will be integrated into GBG.

The transaction is expected to reach final completion by the end of the month.

Article Topics

acquisitions  |  Acuant  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  fraud prevention  |  GBG  |  identity verification  |  onboarding  |  selfie biometrics