Capital One buys digital identity start-up Confyrm
Capital One has acquired San Francisco-based digital identity start-up Confyrm as it seeks to capture the market for consumer identity services.
Financial details were not disclosed
Financial details were not disclosed, but as part of the deal Andrew Nash, founder and CEO of Confyrm, has become managing vice-president of Capital One’s consumer identity services. No word on what happens to the rest of the staff.
Nash says: “Start-ups are formed for many reasons – sometimes it is because there is a challenge that needs to be tackled, and it requires a scrappy little start-up to prove that we can make a difference.”
Confyrm was founded five years ago and offers help against online fraud.
According to Nash, identity systems are becoming more and more complex as they are progressively more distributed, federated and outsourced. He says digital identity systems are becoming core to trusted online transactions for governments, companies and consumers alike.
Confyrm works by sharing security alerts using “privacy enhancing” distribution methods to “increase safety while avoiding impacting privacy or brand trust”.
The firm offers its Confyrm Event Warning System, a platform of shared privacy-preserving identity alerts providing detection of digital identity risk. The system works by providing notifications of suspicious account activity with providers across the ecosystem.
Nash has previously worked as director of technologies at RSA Security, and served on the boards of the Open ID Foundation, Open Identity eXchange, and the Information Card Foundation.
Capital One is staying active in the fintech space. Back in March, it was reported that Amazon was talking to JP Morgan Chase and Capital One about a checking account-like product.
