Personal authentication merger: ELEMENTS to make SMBC Group's Polarify a Subsidiary
ELEMENTS has resolved to acquire shares of Polarify, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, making it a consolidated subsidiary. SMBC Group will continue to maintain ownership of Polarify shares.
The business integration of these industry leaders will expand their customer base to approximately 550 companies with a cumulative total of about 120 million identity verifications. Through this integration, Liquid, a wholly-owned subsidiary of ELEMENTS that provides online identity verification services, will collaborate with Polarify to offer their solutions to a broader customer base. This includes compliance with mandatory identity verification using IC chips in My Number cards and driver's licenses, as well as Liquid's proprietary solutions to strengthen countermeasures against cyber crimes such as SNS investment fraud, romance scams, illegal part-time job schemes, and deepfake impersonation, as well as financial crimes including fraudulent account use and money laundering.
Through this capital and business alliance, Liquid and Polarify will combine their track records, expertise, and solution development capabilities in personal authentication to provide more value-added comprehensive authentication solutions to their users. The ELEMENTS Group and SMBC Group will strengthen their commitment to the highly promising personal authentication business in Japan and challenge business expansion overseas.
Background
With the acceleration of digitalization, while online services have become increasingly commonplace, online fraud and impersonation are also on the rise. Identity verification is an effective countermeasure, and since the amendment of the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds in November 2018, eKYC (electronic Know Your Customer) mechanisms for online customer identity verification have become widespread across various industries.
About ELEMENTS and Liquid
ELEMENTS, established in 2013, is a company aiming to solve social issues through technologies such as biometric authentication, image recognition, and generative AI. Their main business is "LIQUID eKYC," a service provided by Liquid since 2019 that enables online completion of identity verification required for account registration and bank account opening. They offer methods using ID document photography or IC chip reading with selfie facial comparison, as well as public personal authentication (JPKI/smartphone JPKI).
About Polarify
Polarify, established in 2017, is a consolidated subsidiary of SMBC Group and was the first company to receive authorization as a bank advancement company from the Financial Services Agency. Their main business is "Polarify eKYC," a service similar to "LIQUID eKYC" that enables online identity verification, provided since 2018.
Future Initiatives
- Promotion of IC chip-based identity verification in line with government policy and strengthening fraud prevention
- Expansion to person authentication with approximately 20 times more verifications and cross-industry fraud detection with about double the detection rate
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