Signicat buys UK anti-fraud and identity tech firm Sphonic

Digital ID company Signicat has acquired UK-based anti-fraud and identity verification platform Sphonic for an undisclosed sum. 

Signicat says the acquisition will enable the company to better protect financial institutions against fraud, financial crime and money laundering, expanding its existing identity platform with Sphonic’s know your customer (KYC), know your business (KYB) and anti-money laundering (AML) solutions.

Since 2019 Signicat has acquired five companies, including in the last year mobile authentication company Encap, electronic signing provider Dokobit, and identity proofing innovator Electronic IDentification.

Keeping customers safe from fraud 

Signicat, the digital identity pioneer aims to be a single provider for the entire digital identity and anti-financial crime lifecycle across Europe. This includes identity solutions to support customer onboarding, authentication, e-signing, fraud management and risk management. 

“With digital fraud continuing to rise globally, it has become critical to know that your customers are who they claim to be. With Sphonic’s leading team of professionals and their data orchestration and decisioning platform, we will be able to offer a more extensive range of onboarding services with highly flexible risk and compliance solutions - all of which can keep international customers safe from fraud,” says Asger Hattel, CEO of Signicat.

Allowing banks to access technology to improve services 

Founded in London in 2012, Sphonic’s primary product, Workflow Manager, enables clients to customise, automate and manage compliance workflows seamlessly. Sphonic leverages around 100 of the world's leading data and technology providers allowing banks and other institutions to access the best-in-breed technologies via a single API. The solution improves the quality of data and increases end-user insights that the customers can use to make an onboarding decision. 

Sphonic has recently expanded its solution offering with a highly scalable real-time fraud & AML transaction monitoring solution in addition to a case management system that also offers tools for visualising identity, fraud and AML data.

“We are excited to become part of the Signicat family” says Andy Lee, the founder and general manager of Sphonic. “For the past 10 years, we have built industry-leading solutions that solve some of the most complex onboarding and compliance challenges in heavily regulated industries for global digital payments, crypto, gaming and lending brands requiring rapid onboarding for their high-volume client base. With Signicat there was a great complementary fit. Now we are ready to accelerate our ambitions in new markets and verticals and creating a compelling joint global solution.”

Sphonic will continue as a separate business entity, named “Sphonic, a Signicat company”, for the short term, and then be fully integrated into Signicat. The Sphonic management team will form part of Signicat’s wider senior management team and Andy Lee will also take on the role of Signicat’s UK Country Manager.