Ekata

Ekata, now a Mastercard company, operates in the digital identity verification space, providing solutions to businesses globally. The company was founded in 2019, but its roots trace back to 1997 as Whitepages Pro, which was spun out from Whitepages and rebranded to Ekata under the leadership of CEO Rob Eleveld. This strategic move allowed the company to focus exclusively on the enterprise-grade identity verification market. A significant milestone in its history was the acquisition by Mastercard in 2021 for $850 million, a move designed to enhance Mastercard's identity verification capabilities and combat digital fraud.

The company's business model centers on providing a suite of APIs and a SaaS tool designed to help businesses detect and prevent fraud in online transactions and account openings. Its clients include e-commerce merchants, financial institutions, payment service providers, and online travel platforms. By leveraging a proprietary data set, the Ekata Identity Graph, and machine learning, the company helps its customers make more accurate risk decisions about their users. This graph cross-references data points such as email, phone, name, physical address, and IP to provide a comprehensive risk assessment.

Ekata’s product suite includes the Transaction Risk API, Account Opening API, and Pro Insight, a manual review tool. The APIs are designed to be integrated into a client's existing systems to automate the verification process for new account sign-ups and online payments. The primary benefit for clients is the ability to reduce chargebacks and false declines, thereby increasing revenue while protecting against fraudulent activities. Pro Insight serves as a tool for fraud analysts to manually investigate high-risk transactions, providing them with the underlying data and risk signals needed to make an informed decision. The core function is to distinguish between legitimate and fraudulent customers in real-time digital interactions.

Keywords: identity verification, fraud prevention, risk management, digital identity, Mastercard, data intelligence, transaction risk, account opening, chargeback reduction, SaaS