Mitek (NASDAQ: MITK, www.miteksystems.com), a global leader in mobile capture and digital identity verification software solutions, today announced that it has acquired ICAR, a leading provider of consumer identity verification solutions in Spain and Latin America, for an aggregate purchase price of up to €12.75 million (~US$15.0 million) paid in a combination of cash and shares of Mitek common stock.

The acquisition of ICAR strengthens Mitek’s position as a global digital identity verification powerhouse in the Consumer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solutions market, which the April 2017 MarketsandMarkets report, Consumer IAM Market – Global Forecast,  estimates will reach US$16.6  billion by 2022.

Headquartered in Barcelona with offices in Madrid, São Paulo, and Mexico City, ICAR was founded in 2002 as a spin-off of the Computer Vision Center of the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona. Today, ICAR is a digital consumer identification leader in Spain and Latin America. ICAR’s channel distribution partners include Accenture, Informática El Corte Inglés, and other top technology solutions providers. Its customers are premier banks including Caixa Bank, Banco Neon, and Bancoppel, as well as companies in the telecom, insurance, travel, and energy sectors.

“The technical and cultural fit between ICAR and Mitek is a tremendous opportunity to maximize value for shareholders, while expanding our mission to bring the highest quality user experience and digital identity verification solutions to our customers globally,” said James B. DeBello, Chief Executive Officer of Mitek and Chairman of the Mitek Board of Directors.

Xavier Codó, Chief Executive Officer of ICAR added, “This combination provides a major growth opportunity and allows us to extend cloud services to our partners and customers in Spain and Latin America. It gives us the ability to offer our customers comprehensive identity document coverage throughout the U.S. and Europe. Mitek’s financial stability and commitment to research and development will also enable us to develop the industry’s most comprehensive, versatile, and advanced digital identity verification platform.”

“We have integrated ICAR’s automated identity identification solution. We view Mitek as a strong, established identity verification solutions provider and believe the combination will deliver additional capabilities to our platform giving us a competitive edge,” said Joan Manuel Tabero, CIO of Consumer Finance at Caixa Bank. 

Following the acquisition, Mitek will offer extensive identity document coverage in North America, Europe, and Latin America. ICAR will increase Mitek’s digital identity verification capabilities with several new factors of authentication. The acquisition also further enhances Mitek’s desktop capture capabilities, which will enable customer on-boarding and authentication using computers in addition to mobile devices.

ICAR’s computer vision experts are tightly aligned with the Computer Vision Center of the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona and dedicated to ongoing research and development. The merging of these experts with the Mitek Labs’ machine learning and computer vision scientists will create one of the most powerful research and development teams in the digital identity verification industry.