Socure has acquired Qlarifi in a move that creates a unified identity, anti-fraud, and Buy Now Pay Later credit infrastructure. The acquisition brings together Socure’s identity verification, compliance, and risk decisioning platform with Qlarifi’s real-time BNPL consumer credit database, forming a combined system designed to help lenders approve more qualified applicants, reduce fraud losses, and respond to growing regulatory expectations for transparency and consumer protection.
Socure said that the addition of Qlarifi’s dataset lays a foundation for responsible lending in a rapidly growing BNPL market that has historically operated outside conventional credit reporting systems. Traditional credit bureaus have struggled with the high frequency and millisecond-level lending decisions required for BNPL transactions, often failing to capture granular repayment histories or correctly assign tradelines. Socure believes the new unified system addresses these gaps by validating applicant identities across providers, identifying loan stacking and overextension, and broadening credit access for thin-file consumers.
BNPL’s global expansion continues at a steady pace. The category accounts for nearly 6% of all e-commerce transactions in the United States. It is growing by more than 20% annually, with worldwide BNPL spending expected to surpass $700 billion by 2028. Despite this momentum, the sector has faced increasing calls from regulators for improved reporting, cross-provider visibility, and consumer safeguards. Socure’s integration of Qlarifi’s architecture is positioned as a direct response to those market and regulatory pressures.
Founded by former Klarna and Zip executives, Qlarifi has focused on helping BNPL lenders detect overextension and first-party fraud by aggregating repayment data across providers in real time. Before the acquisition, the company completed an initial pilot in Europe that demonstrated measurable improvements in underwriting accuracy and borrower protection. With Socure’s commercial scale, Identity Graph intelligence, and RiskOS decisioning engine, the combined platform now aims to offer a single decisioning fabric for lenders across identity verification, repayment visibility, and fraud prevention.
The acquisition fits into Socure’s broader portfolio expansion. The company’s RiskOS suite already powers solutions for consumer and business verification, age assurance, credit underwriting, fraud prevention, anti-money laundering compliance, and ongoing authentication. The addition of Qlarifi extends that footprint into BNPL-specific credit decisioning, giving lenders and merchants a unified layer intended to reduce fraud-driven payment costs and support responsible consumer credit building.
KEY QUOTES:
“We built Qlarifi to solve a very real pain point: the lack of infrastructure to protect consumers from overextending themselves across multiple BNPL providers. 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.”
Alex Naughton, Co-founder and CEO of Qlarifi
“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.”
Johnny Ayers, CEO and Founder of Socure
