Major international credit bureau and identity data provider TransUnion announced on May 18 that it would acquire fraud solution vendor iovation. Terms for the deal were undisclosed, however, TransUnion noted that iovation’s management team would stay in place following the deal’s closure. The acquisition is anticipated to close late in the second quarter or early in the third quarter pending regulatory approval.
TransUnion already provides fraud solutions based largely on the massive quantity of people identity data it holds, namely through its TLOxp and IDxp solutions. iovation is best-known among fraud prevention solutions for its advanced digital device identity network that stretches across 5 billion unique devices used in more than 50 countries worldwide. It appears that acquiring this online device data was TransUnion’s primary goal in moving forward with the acquisition.
“TransUnion has long had fraud prevention capabilities that have leveraged our traditional data assets,” Geoff Miller, TransUnion’s SVP of Global Fraud & Identity Solutions told about-fraud.com. “We now have the opportunity to combine our offline data with iovation’s online data which will result in significant enhancements to our fraud and identity solutions.”
The iovation acquisition also opens opportunities for TransUnion to sell fraud solutions directly to e-commerce merchants, beyond its primary focus on financial institutions until now.
“We will be aggressively integrating our mutual products to provide incremental value to our mutual customers and partners,” Miller said to about-fraud.com. “We have a complementary customer base and our strength in financial services, combined with iovation’s strengths in other verticals, will allow us to leverage those relationships and cross-sell TransUnion products and services.”
Previous data provider acquistions
The iovation acquisition is the second such deal between a significant fraud solution vendor and a major data provider in the past 12 months. In January of this year, the RELX Group acquired fraud prevention platform ThreatMetrix for $817 million to merge the company into its LexisNexis Risk Solutions division.
Like TransUnion, LexisNexis is a major data provider of off-line identity information on people. ThreatMetrix’s Digital Identity Network claims to analyze over 100 million transactions per day and maintains a repository of over 1.4 billion unique online identities from 4.5 billion devices in 185 countries.
“Bringing [ThreatMetrix] together with our own strengths in physical identity attributes will give our clients across all forms of commerce and geographies a more reliable, comprehensive approach to fraud and identity risk management while maintaining the privacy and security principles our customers have come to expect” RELX Group’s Risk & Business Analytics CEO Mark Kelsey said at the time. “The acquisition is in line with our organic growth driven strategy, supported by acquisitions of targeted data sets and analytics that are natural additions to our existing business.”
Other past major acquisitions of fraud solution vendors by a data provider include the 2013 acquisition of 41st Parameter by Experian for $324 million and the 2013 acquisition of TLO by TransUnion for $154 million.
Auth0 raises $55M from investors
In other news in this month, identity management and authentication platform Auth0 raised $55 million in Series D funding, bringing its total investment to date to $110 million. The Bellevue, Washington-based startup claims it authenticates more than 1.5 billion user logins each month.
The company has doubled its customer base and revenue over the past year and opened offices in London, Sydney and Tokyo. Auth0 plans to use the additional funding to fuel its continued global expansion and further develop the company’s Universal Identity Platform. The company already claims a customer base spread across 70 different countries.
The Series D round was led by Sapphire Ventures and included the participation of existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Trinity Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, and K9 Ventures.
