Cloud Communications Platform, Melrose Labs to Protect Businesses from Fraud with New Technology Partnership

Distributed by Business Wire
21st September 2020

Melrose Labs has partnered with Phronesis Technologies to reassure businesses that customers are who they say they are

EDINBURGH, Scotland–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Following the launch of its voice and messaging services earlier this year, Melrose Labs’ new partnership will see the platform develop new identity verification services that will protect businesses and improve customer engagement.

The new offerings will also enhance Melrose Labs’ existing Identity and Location, and One-Time Password (OTP) services.

When SMS is used to deliver a one-time password to a user, there is a risk that the message could be intercepted. With these new services, businesses will be able to identify SIM swapping and deny the use of OTP to prevent fraudulent use of a user’s account. Mark Hay, CEO of Melrose Labs says:

“Identity verification is essential to reducing fraudulent activity and is a key part of ensuring secure and trustworthy customer engagements in online transactions. Our new partnership with Phronesis Technologies will allow us to develop new services and enhance our existing offerings.

“We’ve worked with Phronesis on a number of public and private sector projects before and our services complement one another well. Together, we’re able to provide businesses with reassurance by offering a superior service.”

Melrose Labs’ Identity and Location Service will also be enhanced, enabling a more intelligent mobile number lookup. The service will enable organisations to verify that a mobile number is associated with device analytics and that the name associated with the number matches that provided by the user.

The platform’s new identity verification services will be offered to organisations in the public and private sector through its Identity product line. Companies in fintech, IT, retail, utilities and government will find the services particularly beneficial. Mark Hay says:

“Identity verification is becoming increasingly important to companies across several sectors, particularly those where additional layers of verification are essential. In part, this comes from increased online transactions and new regulations around Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). The area of ID verification has seen significant growth over the last few years, and we believe that the services we’re developing will rise above traditional offerings.”

Phronesis Technologies will use Melrose Labs’ Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) offering and extensive experience in communications, to perform identity verification in customer journeys that involve voice and messaging. James Trenholme, Founder and Director of Phronesis Technologies says:

“We started Phronesis to provide powerful mobile data insights. By combining our data solutions with Melrose Labs’ communications layer, we can build more powerful customer offerings that fit right in with traditional voice, SMS and OTP services. All companies, large and small, rely on trust being at the heart of business and today’s high-tech fraud attacks erode this deep customer trust. Our solutions address that balance without adding unnecessary friction into the process.”

Find out more about Melrose Labs’ identity verification services at melroselabs.com.

About Melrose Labs

Melrose Labs is a cloud communication services provider in fixed-line, mobile, internet and satellite communications. Based in Edinburgh, its services help businesses communicate better with their staff and customers, increasing their success.

The company’s service portfolio is diverse and spans Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). Its primary focus across these mediums is voice and messaging, offering a range of APIs for simple and complex tasks, as well as sophisticated services for mobile marketing, emergency notification and enterprise communications.

Melrose Labs was founded in August 2019 by Mark Hay, former owner and CEO/CTO of Hay Systems Ltd / HSL Mobile, the UK-based SMS aggregator.

About Phronesis Technologies

Phronesis is a Bath-based company at the forefront of the real-time mobile data industry. It provides real time insights that help companies fight fraud by verifying the mobile phone number and identity declared by a customer. Phronesis provides a deeper level of trust in customer engagement from account creation and interaction, to authentication and verification.