Newly Minted Prove Strikes Deal With Early Warning LLC

Prove (formerly Payfone) has struck a deal with Early Warning Services LLC to acquire the latter’s mobile authentication business, its multi-factor authentication and orchestration systems and its Authentify line of business, according to a press release on Wednesday (July 29).

Early Warning, which acquired Authentify in 2015, is a consortium owned by seven of the country’s largest banks.

According to the press release, Prove and Early Warning have partnered since 2013 to deliver authentication systems to financial institutions (FIs). The deal means that Prove will take over direct support of this partnership’s customers.

Geoff Miller, a former TransUnion SVP of global fraud and identity solutions, has joined Prove as SVP and general manager of the newly acquired multifactor authentication business. He is also a former Payfone board member.

“When you are trusted and relied upon by the world’s leading financial institutions, other industries notice and want the same protections for their customers,” said Rodger Desai, CEO of Prove. “This acquisition will further accelerate our rapid growth and penetration into financial institutions around the globe.”

The release noted that the deal will position Prove to become “the global standard for customer identity and authentication.” The company’s overall goal is to “enable companies to authenticate customer identities accurately, effortlessly and privately, while preventing fraud caused by false positives.”

Prove said it serves customers in 195 countries in the healthcare, insurance, retail, technology and telecommunications industries.

In another announcement on Wednesday (July 29), Prove officially became Payfone’s new name. The rebranding for the identity authentication platform included the announcement of $100 million in new funding for the newly minted Prove.

Prove said it now takes care of the digital onboarding, servicing, call center and payment services for more than 1,000 enterprises. Beyond that, Prove cited McKinsey & Co. research estimating that the modern customer identity authentication will grow to $20 billion by 2022.