Socure has acquired Qlarifi in a move designed to reshape the infrastructure supporting one of the world’s fastest-growing forms of consumer credit.
The acquisition aims to establish the first unified identity, anti-fraud and BNPL credit system. While the value of the transaction was not disclosed, Socure said the deal will help lenders, merchants and consumers access safer and lower-cost BNPL payments by unlocking cross-provider visibility and reducing first-party fraud losses.
Socure specialises in AI-powered identity verification, fraud prevention, credit underwriting and AML compliance. Its platform supports real-time decisioning through its Identity Graph and RiskOS technology. Qlarifi, founded by former Klarna and Zip BNPL specialists, operates a purpose-built credit data platform that enables instant repayment insights and flags high-risk borrowing patterns.
The companies said the combined solution will modernise BNPL credit infrastructure, addressing longstanding challenges linked to high-frequency, small-value lending. BNPL transactions have historically sat outside traditional credit systems, creating data blind spots and mismatched identity records that increase fraud exposure and reduce credit access for reliable borrowers.
Additional information released alongside the announcement highlighted the rapid scale of BNPL usage. In the US, BNPL now represents nearly 6% of all e-commerce transactions and is growing more than 20% annually. Globally, BNPL spend is expected to surpass $700bn by 2028, but industry infrastructure has not kept pace, leaving lenders with limited visibility and consumers without a clear route to building credit.
Qlarifi’s platform has already demonstrated material impact in pilot programmes in Europe, where its data-sharing model helped identify loan stacking and first-party fraud across BNPL providers. The firm was created to mitigate consumer overextension and give lenders more accurate credit insights.
“We built Qlarifi to solve a very real pain point: the lack of infrastructure to protect consumers from overextending themselves across multiple BNPL providers,” Qlarifi co-founder and CEO Alex Naughton said, “By joining forces with Socure, we now have their tremendous commercial scale, balance sheet, and world-class analytics behind us to build the infrastructure that will enable responsible lending at scale and demonstrate to regulators that the industry can protect consumers while expanding access to credit.”
Socure CEO and founder Johnny Ayers said, “BNPL has outgrown the legacy systems that were never designed to support their innovative lending products. At the same time, consumers deserve a safe path to build credit, lenders need real time visibility to reduce fraud and risk, and regulators require transparency and reporting. Qlarifi built the first real-time BNPL consumer credit database, and by combining it with SocureID and our Identity Graph, we can deliver the unified infrastructure that all market participants have been asking for.”
Socure said the acquisition aligns with its broader goal of expanding its RiskOS suite, which supports consumer and business verification, age assurance, authentication and fraud defence across the financial ecosystem.
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