Aware acquires Fortress Identity for cloud biometrics and financial services tools

Aware is adding technical capabilities around biometric onboarding, know your customer (KYC) checks and authentication, and expanding its presence in the financial services market with the acquisition of Fortress Identity, capping a dramatic year of consolidation and investments for scaling biometrics providers.

The deal expands Aware’s cloud-based identity proofing offerings, according to the announcement, with enhanced onboarding, verification and authentication technologies to help customers meet financial compliance requirements, mitigate risk and curb fraud.

Fortress Identity’s FortressID platform provides biometric multi-factor authentication for highly secure, seamless and passwordless user experiences, Aware says. The technology is used to verify identity documents and perform direct risk and due diligence checks, including for anti-money laundering (AML), counter-terrorism financing (CTF) and politically-exposed persons (PEP) checks.

FortressID and the FortressBA voice and face biometric authentication platform were updated, and biometric payment platform FortressPAY launched by Fortress Identity earlier this year.

“The cloud-native FortressID platform is highly complementary to Aware’s current offerings. Its existing customer base will help accelerate our penetration into the most attractive markets in North America and other geographies—furthering our transformation to a SaaS business model and our ability to provide customers with biometrics on demand,” says Bob Eckel, Aware’s chief executive officer. “Furthermore, the acquisition strengthens our position in our core markets in Latin America and Europe and expands our suite of offerings to include each link in the identity value chain.”

In addition to its own customer base of banks and fintechs, which recently added Turkey’s Garanti BBVA, Aware has also been finding traction in the U.S. government market as its revenues rapidly rise.

Alessandro Chiarini of Fortress Identity comments, “Since inception, Fortress Identity’s mission has been to strengthen the integration between digital ID verification and biometric authentication during onboarding so it can be leveraged in subsequent enterprise authentication. It aligns nicely with Aware’s vision of creating a world where individuals own their identity and I’m excited for the collective impact the combined suite of offerings will have.”

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Article Topics

acquisitions  |  AML  |  Aware  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  financial services  |  Fortress Identity  |  identity verification  |  KYC  |  onboarding  |  SaaS  |  stocks