Identiq Identity Verification Solution Acquired by Incode for Undisclosed Sum

Incode Technologies Inc., a San Francisco-based anti-fraud platform for identity and age verification, announced at the end of June that it had acquired Identiq Protocol Ltd., a Tel Aviv-based identity verification startup. The terms of the deal were not publicly disclosed, although Incode said in its press release revealing the acquisition that it was part of a larger $100 million commitment to developing privacy-preserving identity infrastructure.

“We have always believed that privacy and fraud prevention are not a tradeoff, but part of the same problem, solved together or not at all,” said Ricardo Amper, Founder and CEO of Incode. “Identiq is the piece that enhances our privacy by design architecture, the natural culmination of the decisions we made on day one.”

Founded in 2015, Incode is a self-proclaimed global leader in AI-driven identity and trust, with a mission to power a world of trust at the speed of AI. Incode claims it builds its own frontier models, adapting to any new fraud while letting good users through – trained on one of the industry’s largest identity datasets: 7 billion+ trust checks and 400 million+ profiles worldwide, on a privacy-by-design architecture. Incode lists among its customers eight of the top ten U.S. banks, eight of the top nine U.S. telcos, three of the top three global neobanks, and four of the top five global marketplaces.

Identiq’s Eight-year Run

Identiq was founded in 2018 in Tel Aviv. CEO Itay Levy was previously a part of the founding team of Buzzmetrics which was acquired by Nielsen. His two Co-founders were Uri Arad, previously the Head of Analytics and Research at PayPal’s risk department, and Ido Shilon, who previously led the Israeli R&D center for the Nielsen company. 

Identiq sought to change the identity verification market by validating new end-users without asking customers to expose any user data whatsoever, contrasting with the approach of traditional identity verification vendors. The idea was to form the first fully anonymous global identity verification network. This would allow companies to onboard new customers with confidence, while reducing false positives, increasing approval rates and creating a better user experience. 

Identiq’s proprietary technology compares a new user’s details against identities already trusted by other network members. Identiq positioned its protocol as offering global organizations a higher-fidelity, lower cost, and more secure alternative to third-party identity data providers, who it claimed tended to charge a high amount for stale information on user identities. Moreover, companies that use these traditional, centralized identity data provider solutions must expose their own user data, putting them at risk of breach-by-proxy, disclosing trade secrets, and violating privacy regulations.

Identiq by design does not collect, share or store any user data whatsoever. Their FAIR (Fully Anonymous Identity Resolution) technology uses proprietary cryptographic protocols to obtain validation from other network members while preserving complete consumer privacy. This makes it fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations.

“Every institution shared the same concern with us: how do we fight fraud together without giving up control of our customers’ data,” said Itay Levy, Co-Founder and CEO of Identiq in a press release issued by Incode. “Identiq built the answer to that very question. As part of Incode, that answer is now available to every organization that deals with massive amounts of user data.”

$52 Million Raised by Identiq to Date

Identiq raised over $52 million in total over the life of the company, with a $5 million seed round in 2019 and a Series A round of $47M in 2021. The Series A was led by Insight Partners and Entrée Capital with additional participation from Amdocs, Sony Innovation Fund by IGV, and existing investors, including Vertex Ventures Israel, Oryzn Capital and Slow Ventures.

Nevertheless, despite its promising solution, Identiq did not succeed in fully commercializing its technology, which laid the groundwork for the eventual sale to Incode. The acquisition is Incode’s third in two years, according to tech industry outlet SiliconAngle. The company bought identity verification rival MetaMap Inc. in 2024 and AuthenticID in 2025.

No one from Identiq’s founding team responded to requests from Fraudbeat for additional comment.