During the Cardano Summit, we announced a new strategic partnership between IOG and Acuant, an identity verification, document authentication, and fraud prevention technology services provider. Its goal? To create a safer decentralized finance (DeFi) environment with Atala PRISM, IOG's decentralized identity platform.

This deal has been forged in response to evolving regulatory requirements for blockchain-based finance and identity platforms. Many regulatory bodies now require that blockchain projects can prove a user’s identity and ensure that malicious actors are kept out. The integration with IOG's platform will mean that Atala PRISM has access to over 300 sanction lists and watch lists. This digital awareness, and the implementation of Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance checks will prevent bad actors from infiltrating the ecosystem.

One of the fundamental principles of digital identity is that individuals should be able to hold the keys to their own identities, rather than be dependent on fragmented and siloed third parties. This is something that both IOG and Acuant are firm believers in. Having a verifiable identity credential could be a game-changer for the 1.7 billion people globally who currently cannot prove their identity. By leveraging blockchain technology to foster financial inclusion, all these people could gain access to vital services like bank accounts, loans, healthcare, and many others.

Partnering with Acuant will allow us to enrich Atala PRISM, and offer a more secure digital ID verification process, ensuring provable identity is available to everyone. The creation of verifiable and secure identity credentials makes ID checks easier and more reliable. Ultimately, all these factors combine to create inherent trust in the system.

Global partners in every major industry

Atala PRISM is built on Cardano, a third-generation proof-of-stake blockchain. Combining Cardano’s provable security, scalability, and speed with Acuant’s market position and regulatory compliance technology creates a feasible alternative to current national identity systems. This opens up financial and social services to billions of underserved sectors of the global population.

Acuant has worked with hundreds of global partners in every major industry and almost in every country and territory in the world. The company has verified billions of identities worldwide for transactions ranging from simple age verification to border-crossing or opening a bank account, and it currently collaborates with almost one hundred blockchain based businesses, including more than 50 digital currency exchanges.

Speaking during the Summit, Jose Caldera, Acuant’s Chief Product Officer, said: “Our trusted identity platform has been built with purpose and serves our mission to power trust for all. We aim to empower our clients with inclusive technology that allows them to execute their vision of providing services to all demographics, even those that may be otherwise financially underserved.”

“This partnership with IOG is so exciting to us,” he continued. “We share the belief in creating technologies that have a positive social impact. The fundamental concepts that are built within the Cardano blockchain align with our principle of democratization of trust.”