Socure adds document verification engine from Berbix in $70M acquisition

Socure has acquired San Francisco-based document verification software maker Berbix for $70 million in cash and stocks to integrate its patent-pending forensics engine for fake ID detection.

Along with the acquisition, Socure has announced the launch of version 3.0 of its Predictive Document Verification (DocV) product. The new version offers previously unmatched accuracy, speed, user experience, and fraud reduction, the company claims.

Socure Founder and CEO Johnny Ayers pushes back in the announcement against the perception that all document verification software offers the same performance. He says the company’s internal testing with several vendors shows quite the opposite.

“In fact, we found endless examples of other vendors in the market providing inaccurate stats that just couldn’t be validated. I don’t blame users for their lack of faith here,” says Ayers.

“Conversely, Berbix was the opposite in our testing. They delivered substantially better results than what was promised with far superior performance in accuracy and speed, which we have been able to pair with our superior user experience and fraud models.”

Berbix was founded in 2018, and CEO and Co-founder Eric Levine will take the role of SVP and head of DocV Product Management with Socure.

“I’m extremely proud of what we built at Berbix to advance state-of-the-art document verification. Moving forward with Socure, we are able to multiply our impact on day one by leveraging our technology with Socure’s substantial customer base, reach, and reputation,” says Levine. “Combining our independent investments in document verification is yielding stunning results – and we’re just getting started.”

The acquisition of Berbix accelerates Socure’s product roadmap for document verification by more than 18 months, according to the announcement, and opens up new markets and use cases. The company points to telehealth, remote workforce, ride-sharing, high-risk financial services and restricted product sales among targets.

Socure’s international expansion plans also get a boost with global coverage of ICAO-compliant travel documents like passports and national ID cards. New ID documents can also be added to the company’s library quickly with natural language processing that can learn IDs with changing formats, Socure says.

Berbix’ capabilities can also support NIST IAL2, which is used in government onboarding scenarios. The announcement points to U.S. FTC stats showing a 30 percent year-over-year increase in consumer fraud losses in 2022.

Initial integration improves DocV

The new DocV 3.0 makes automated decisions for 94 percent of applicants, compared to an industry average of 80 percent, Socure says.

“Good consumers” will receive auto-approvals on the first attempt at a 90 percent rate, compared to 64 percent, and fraudulent documents are detected at an 83 percent rate, compared to the industry standard of 56 percent, the company claims. Conclusive, automated results are delivered in less than 4 seconds on average.

“We’ve spent years investing in being the most accurate in identifying third-party and synthetic fraud, KYC population coverage, and now we’re taking document verification performance to the same level,” Ayers says.

Article Topics

acquisitions  |  Berbix  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  document verification  |  fraud prevention  |  KYC  |  Socure