Ever since we started UnifyID, we knew that we were only solving a small piece of the identity problem. We also knew that there are strong network effects in identity and so those who have a large scale will have an unfair advantage against smaller players.

We have a truly innovative technology that is unique in the market and that wins tons of awards. We are the only behavioral biometrics solution that is accurate enough to actually authenticate the person behind the device without requiring any conscious user action. We have some great customers who love our solution. But our commercial impact was limited because we were only solving a part of the problem. Customers needed to piece together their own identity solution from a variety of best-of-breed solutions, and we missed out on some customer opportunities because some companies would not rely on a startup company for something as core as their identity stack. We did not have the breadth nor the scale to have the impact we could have.

Why Prove?
Identity is a huge market, but solutions can roughly be split into two areas:

• Identity verification (IDV): Proving who you are and tying that to a real-world identity. Typically performed when you set up your account.
• Authentication: Making sure you are the same person you were the last time. Typically done every time you log in.

At UnifyID, we have been entirely focused on making the second part (authentication) as seamless as possible. This is because authentication is a major form of user friction that happens all the time. But identity verification is also an important part of identity, especially during user onboarding. And the status quo in identity verification is terrible. Many solutions ask questions based on public records or your credit report (like what address you have lived at or your social security number), or ask you to take a photo of your driver’s license, or enter a credit card number. Knowledge-based factors are increasingly worthless for identity verification because they are hard to keep secret in the era of the data breach. They are also annoying for users.

Prove has the best, most seamless solution in the market for identity verification. It allows you to use your mobile phone number to verify your identity in a seamless way. Prove has special agreements with all the major mobile carriers to get access to detailed information about your mobile phone number, whether you are actually the owner of that number, and whether a request is actually coming from your phone. Because in most cases this can happen without the user needing to do anything, this allows Prove to offer solutions like Prove Pre-fill, which greatly reduces friction in customer onboarding while also making it more secure.

Prove has seen great commercial success with its phone-centric identity solutions with thousands of enterprise customers, and is used by over 500 financial institutions worldwide, including 9 of the top 10 U.S. banks. Prove services over 1 billion phones in 195 countries. The combination of Prove’s existing identity solutions and proven go-to-market scale with UnifyID’s focus on seamless authentication and huge lead in innovation will be a new identity powerhouse that compares very favorably to other solutions.

How did this come about?
During the pandemic, with a sudden need to remotely authenticate both employees and users, and with 90% of organizations seeing a significant increase in cyberattacks, we saw a huge uptick in interest in UnifyID. We got connected with Prove during the pandemic and quickly realized that we shared the same vision. At UnifyID, it has always been about making security more seamless for the user, and we focused on mobile as we always knew that mobile was the future of identity and commerce. Prove is also mobile-first and focused on enabling seamless user experiences.

What now?
Don’t worry! We will continue to provide customers access to all of our resources, including our products, APIs, and Developer Portal, while also expanding our offerings with Prove’s support. Our award-winning PushAuth, GaitAuth, HumanDetect, and BehaviorPrint APIs will all become part of Prove’s product line. PushAuth is a great complement to Prove’s existing SMS-based authentication offerings and is the only passwordless or 2FA solution in the market that incorporates user behavior and environment for building adaptive authentication policies. Our other mobile behavioral biometrics solutions will allow Prove to expand into new markets and use cases, including continuous authentication, fraud detection, contact center authentication, and physical access.

All of UnifyID’s leadership and AI/ML team will be joining Prove. We will continue to invest and expand in the future, and the UnifyID team will become the core of a brand new Silicon Valley-based division of Prove.

We are overjoyed to be joining forces with Prove to solve identity and authentication forever.