US payment and cash withdrawal company Mastercard has announced the upcoming acquisition of identity verification solutions company Ekata for $850 million. The acquisition comes as Mastercard seeks to meet the growing demands of its customers and the threats to the global payments ecosystem. Online identity management is one of the major challenges of this operation.

An acquisition to strengthen Mastercard’s identification solutions

As part of this acquisition, Ekata’s global identity verification solutions will join the solutions already developed by Mastercard’s “Cyber and Intelligence” group. The objective is to offer customers a more complete identity service to meet their immediate needs. Identification is used in a number of ways: when opening new accounts, when making purchases or sales at merchants or when it is necessary to assess potential fraud before a transaction is authorised.

Ajay Bhalla, president of the Cyber and Intelligence group at Mastercard, said of the use of online identity management:

“The shift to a more digital world requires us to secure every transaction and maintain trust in every interaction. Security and a seamless customer experience in cyber environments are real issues that deserve real solutions. […]

We have the opportunity to make sure we know who is who through identification technologies and therefore maintain that trust unlike paper-based identification techniques. With the addition of Ekata, we will advance our digital identity strategy as part of a broader effort to boost the digital economy.”

Digital transition of the financial sector in focus

Ekata, formerly known as Whitepages Pro, is a 2,000-client strong company that includes Equifax, Checkout.com, Lyft, Stripe and Intuit. Its acquisition by Mastercard seems logical given the digital transition happening in online commerce and internet transactions, a transition helped by the COVID 19 pandemic.

Ekata’s president and founder, Alex Algard, talks about the work his company has done to provide online identification solutions:

“Mastercard’s focus on making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible for everyone aligns directly with Ekata’s vision of enabling secure online transactions through digital identity. All of Ekata’s employees have set the bar high to offer their digital identity verification solution globally, and Mastercard is the natural ecosystem for Ekata to further push the boundaries of that bar.”

The acquisition is expected to close in the next six months, but the two institutions are not immune as Visa backed out of the Plaid acquisition back in January.

Translated from Mastercard et Ekata, une acquisition pour renforcer sa solution d’identification en ligne