Acuant expands globally with Hello Soda acquisition

Security leader Acuant completed its acquisition of Hello Soda on May 4, 2021, enhancing its core technology and expanding its global footprint. Executives from both companies stated that their complementary technical and data science capabilities will drive real-time fraud prevention, identity verification, AML compliance and KYC solutions worldwide.

Yossi Zekri, president and chief executive officer at Acuant, remarked that adding Hello Soda to Acuant's Trusted Identity Platform will enable the company to reach more people and secure the future of digital identity. "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," Zekri said. "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."

James Black, founder and CEO at Hello Soda, agreed, stating the merger will strengthen Hello Soda's accomplishments and further the newly formed team's shared objectives and vision. "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."

Advanced analytics

Black additionally noted that Hello Soda's advanced analytics has powered its KYC and AML technology suite that uses proprietary analytics, matching algorithms and data science modelling. These capabilities provide configurable and composite scoring, enabling businesses to derive actionable insights, from onboarding and continuous monitoring to enhanced due diligence, he stated.

Black pointed out that Hello Soda's web solution also helps companies mitigate risk of impersonation fraud by searching and monitoring millions of customer PII records on the dark web to identify compromised data. The company's multilingual and automated identity verification platform is currently in use in more than 180 countries, he added.

International expansion

The Hello Soda acquisition, as Zekri noted, is part of a strategic growth trajectory. In 2020, the company acquired IdentityMind, an SaaS platform for online risk management and compliance automation. In addition, the company has grown its staff by 30 percent and added new partners, including Refinitiv, Unisys, CoreSE and albo.

Following are additional accomplishments the company described:

• New patents: In the second quarter of 2021, Acuant was awarded Patent numbers 10,931,461 and 10,965,668 by the USPTO both for system and methods relating to digital identity verification (adding to patent 10,872,338); the company also celebrated hitting over 450M digital identities being created with their patented eDNA®).

• Global coverage: Along with the industry's largest ID library (more than 6,000 templates), Acuant expanded its leading third-party data ecosystem to expand offerings and increase global coverage for verification to reaching more of the world's population without physical IDs and/or smart devices.

• Compliance leadership: Acuant joined the Digital ID and Authentication Council of Canada, Open Identity Exchange and The Investing and Savings Alliance to expand its membership of working groups such as the Document Security Alliance and Association of Document Validation Professionals, among others, and continues to meet INCITS, ICAO, NIST and ISO standards. It is also in on track for FedRAMP certification in 2021. The company continues to be the gold standard with PCI, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications and is on track for FedRAMP certification in 2021.

Zekri went on to say that Hello Soda's top-performing analytics and composite scoring models will enhance Acuant's technology stack and create a compelling, all-in-one fraud prevention platform. Knowing if people are who they claim to be is a persistent problem, and Acuant is expanding global reach to advance trust and identity verification, he added.

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