Socure, the provider of digital identity verification solutions, has acquired Berbix, a San Francisco-based startup that developed a high-accuracy document verification solution with a patent-pending forensics engine “able to detect spoofed IDs – including AI-generated fakes – that are visually indistinguishable to the human eye.”
The approximately $70 million cash and stock transaction “marks the first acquisition for Socure.”
With the integration of Berbix’s technology complete, Socure has also “announced the launch of its Predictive Document Verification (DocV) 3.0 solution, which sets a new bar in accuracy, speed, user experience, and fraud reduction, far outpacing market competitors.”
Socure founder and CEO Johnny Ayers said:
“There’s a perception among users that all document verification solutions perform the same, but after testing many offerings in the market, we found this to be categorically false. In fact, we found endless examples of other vendors in the market providing inaccurate stats that just couldn’t be validated, with inferior true accepts, true rejects and false accepts, along with substantially slower responses. I don’t blame users for their lack of faith here.”
As noted in the update:
“Berbix provided the exact opposite in our testing, which is why we acquired the company. They delivered substantially better results than what were promised, and even more importantly, with far superior performance in accuracy and speed. When paired with our superior user experience, identity graph and AI fraud models we are able to deliver the quantitatively-proven best performing identity verification solution in the world.”
Online ID verification has “become more critical than ever as consumers have taken the most essential – and risky – facets of their personal and work lives online.”
From shopping on e-commerce sites “to conducting virtual doctor visits and applying for home mortgages, fast and accurate ID verification is a core component of unlocking trusted transactions.”
It’s also key to “thwarting rampant and growing online fraud.”
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports “a 30% YoY increase in consumer fraud losses in 2022, and the U.S. government infamously saw $700 billion in fraud losses since the start of the pandemic.”
In both cases, compromised and fake identities “were often at the heart of these attacks and losses.” The problem is only “bound to escalate with the surge in generative AI-enabled ID spoofing.”
Socure’s DocV 3.0 is uniquely “prepared to enable increased consumer acquisition while stamping out online identity fraud.”
The solution marries Berbix’s forensics engine and data extraction capabilities with Socure’s frictionless “front-end image capture app that provides an automated user experience.”
Additionally, DocV 3.0 uniquely “leverages predictive risk signals from Socure’s ID+ comprehensive identity graph, inclusive of, but not limited to, rich device, phone ownership, behavioral data, address, and geolocation signals to provide risk decisions on the individual connected to the physical credential. ”
Socure’s approach to radical accuracy in ID verification is proven by the numbers. The solution delivers:
- Increased fully automated decisioning by 14% – DocV 3.0 delivers 94% auto decisioning versus an industry standard of 80%
- Increased first-attempt auto approvals of good consumers by 26% – DocV 3.0 delivers a 90% approval rate of good consumers versus an industry standard of 64%
- Increased fraudulent document capture by 27% – DocV 3.0 accurately captures more than 83% of all fraudulent documents versus an industry standard of 56%
- Increased speed to decision and user experience – DocV 3.0 delivers accurate, fully automated conclusive results in less than 4 seconds versus a range of 6-75 seconds found in the market
Ayers said:
“DocV 3.0 represents a significant departure from legacy providers whose document verification models rely on simple template checks and rules to determine if a document is legitimate. Without running sophisticated fraud models on related personally identifiable information (PII), or pairing the documentary check with rich device, phone ownership, geolocation, and behavioral data, customers see far less accurate decisions, resulting in higher fraud and lower customer acceptance. This prohibits companies from using document verification solutions for high-risk onboarding, authentication, or transactions. It’s a real gap in how ID document verification can be used,”
Getting ID document verification right “equates to many millions of dollars in revenue and savings resulting from a huge lift in customer acquisition, a reduction in fraud losses, and a decrease in the operational burn connected to manual reviews.”
Radical accuracy and speed “are annually quantifiable for every customer.”
Ayers added:
“A global enterprise, for example, can see an extra $86.1 million in revenue in a single year with Predictive DocV 3.0. If they’re running 500,000 checks a month on consumers with a per-year revenue value of $50, improving auto-acceptance of customers by 26% can mean a lift in revenue of $78 million over 12 months. Meanwhile, increasing fraud capture by 27% in that environment, where we’ve actually seen 50 basis points of fraud and an average loss of $1,000, can return $8.1 million over the same period. That doesn’t include the massive amount of savings accrued by reducing the number of investigators who need to manually review potential incidents,”
Berbix was founded in 2018 “by former members of the Airbnb Trust and Safety Team.”
Berbix CEO and co-founder Eric Levine will “assume the role of Socure’s Senior Vice President and Head of DocV Product Management as part of the acquisition.”
The acquisition will “accelerate Socure’s international expansion by providing global coverage of ICAO-compliant travel documents, passports, and national ID cards.”
Onboarding new ID documents “takes less than five days thanks to natural language processing that enables speed and flexibility in learning IDs with changing formats instead of rigid templates.”