This article was written by Don Day of BoiseDev.
Boise-based Kount will soon have a big new owner. Equifax announced it would buy the fraud prevention company for $640 million.
“The acquisition of Kount will expand Equifax’s differentiated data assets to bring global businesses the information and solutions they need to establish identity trust online, “Equifax CEO Mark W. Begor said ina news release. “Our data and technology cloud investments allow us to quickly and aggressively integrate new data and analytics assets like Kount into our global capabilities and bring new market-leading products and solutions to our customers.”
Equifax is known to consumers as one of the three major credit monitoring companies, but it owns a number of other businesses in the financial space.
Kount launched in 2007 in Boise, growing steadily over the years as a private company. It opened a new headquarters building in Downtown Boise in 2019. Investment firm CVC Capital Partners made a large $80 million investment in the firm in 2016.
[ESI Construction to merge with Idaho Falls company]
Kount owns a number of patents and offers products centering on digital fraud protection.
Kount to stay in Boise
Kount will keep its headquarters in Boise according to Equifax, and employees will be part of the larger company’s United States Information Solutions group.
“We are excited to be able to offer Kount solutions with an expansive set of Equifax data, analytics and products,” Equifax CEO Bradley Wiskirchen said. “Equifax’s global reach will accelerate Kount’s international adoption, allowing us to help more businesses around the world to better protect their digital innovations and their customers against emerging threats while improving the customer experience.”
[Kount to Tenth: See inside local tech company’s 100-year-old HQ]
Equifax says it hopes to close the deal in the first quarter of this year.
Kount is the latest Boise startup to see an acquisition from a larger firm. Last fall, Cradlepoint sold its business to Ericcson in a billion-dollar deal. In 2018, TSheets sold to Intuit. In the case of both of these businesses, the new owner kept large local presences and employees.
