As part of its drive to expand its financial services offering, global cloud-based payments provider Checkout.com today announced its intent to acquire digital identity verification (IDV) startup, ubble.
 
The deal—slated to close later this year pending regulatory approval—comes amid the continued growth of online transaction volumes around the world, and the concurrent increased risk of fraud and money laundering. It also supports Checkout.com’s mission to enable businesses and their communities to thrive in the digital economy.
 
The acquisition of ubble will enable Checkout.com to expand its current suite of financial products that allows fintechs and e-commerce merchants to accept and send payments to and from their customers while managing the financial risk involved.
 
The addition of IDV capabilities will support another important aspect of the payment journey: ensuring merchants and fintechs are compliant with local regulations, can verify that their customers are who they say they are, and can stay ahead of potential changes to the complex EU and global regulatory landscape in the future.
 
Co-founded in 2018 by CEO François Wyss, CRO Juliette Delanoe and CTO Nicolas Debernardi, ubble pioneered the technical foundations of real-time video-based identity verification, and today has almost 100 people employed in its French offices. The company’s flagship solution enables the automated verification of a user's identity for over 2000 types of documents from 214 countries and territories, using best-in-class machine learning models.
 
“ubble was founded with a mission to provide people with the convenience and security of using their personal identity in the digital world—and that is clearly becoming a growing need for e-commerce and crypto merchants, digital wallets, and other fintechs we serve,” explained Meron Colbeci, chief product officer at Checkout.com.
 
“We were impressed with the ubble team, their ability to rapidly drive machine-learning innovation in a complex and challenging space, and their market-leading engineering talent. By partnering more closely, we can significantly accelerate their already ambitious roadmap and bring the benefit of their cutting-edge technology to our thriving ecosystem of merchants.”

“For the past four years our team has worked to build a technology foundation that establishes trust between online services and their users, and respects and protects the privacy of identity data across the board,” added ubble CEO Wyss. “With today’s exciting news, we can increase the velocity of our IDV innovation journey, help to evolve the Checkout.com payments technology stack even further, and amplify and extend our collective reach and benefit to merchants around the world.”

To date, ubble—which was funded by Partech, Breega, Kima Ventures and other angel investors—has gained traction with many of the french fintechs, ride-hailing and delivery apps, as well as major banking networks and traditional financial institutions. Its success has been driven by an uncompromising approach to security and compliance and the development of its proprietary technology.
 
From here, the potential use cases remain far-ranging—especially considering the role that IDV can play in marketplaces, issuing or crypto trading, for example.
 
“We always put the needs of our merchants first,” added Colbeci. “By expanding our security and fraud detection capabilities, we can reduce the time, cost and friction those merchants experience with existing IDV solutions. And they can offer their end consumers a simple and compelling experience, which lends itself to increased conversion rates and faster growth.”