Mastercard is a New York-based financial technology start-up that provides payment processing solutions and products along with related consulting services about finance.
According to a report by Reuters, Mastercard is all set to acquire Digital ID verification start-up, Ekata in a deal worth USD 850 million. The reports have confirmed that the buyout has been announced by Mastercard on Monday.
Ekata is a Seattle-based global identification company that verifies user data and ID through SaaS solutions and API network to help businesses and companies all around the world that assess digital risks.
Founded back in the year 2019 by Alex Algard, Ekata develops products and services that helps businesses to identify actual real customers from online bots and fraudsters. Something as simple as opening a bank account can pose multiple security threats and risks as one is basically uploading all their bank-related documents. Another implication of Ekata’s products is to secure digital payment processes that have boosted during this global COVID-19 pandemic and are speculated to grow even bigger in demand.
Online transactions have become increasingly common in these trying times of the pandemic and digital identification seems to be a priority for all sorts of digital interactions. With advancing technologies, fraudsters and hackers too are evolving and companies like Ekata develops products and services for just that.
As mentioned in a report by Reuters, Ekata serves in three major industries: financial services, e-commerce industry and payments systems. Ekata is a well-known company with more than 2,000 big companies as its partner.
According to the company profile on Crunchbase, Ekata’s product portfolio is said to be powered by Ekata’s Identity Engine. This engine system is an intellectual property owned by the ID verification company that is said to use unique data from Ekata’s Identity Network and Ekata Identity Graph. These tools operated together results in an efficient identity verification system that produces consistent results across the world and that too in industry-leading time responses.
Mastercard could definitely benefit from Ekata’s industry-leading ID verification technology that will significantly secure Mastercard’s financial technology services and payment systems operated all around the world.
During this difficult time of the pandemic, digital transactions have surged significantly and this accelerated adoption of e-commerce, digital payment transactions and fin-tech, in general, have boosted the demand for security measures and safeguards against cybercrimes.
According to Reuters, the USD 850 million deal is said to close within the next six months.
