In 2006, Bill Morrow founded CSIdentity in San Antonio.
A few years later, he moved the company to Austin, which had a much more developed technology industry.
This week, Experian, the global information services company, announced plans to buy CSIdentity for $360 million. The deal is pending regulatory approval.
“The acquisition of CSID accelerates executive of our Consumer Services strategy and enables us to address a broader spectrum of the consumer market,” Brian Cassin, CEO of Experian, said in a news release. “By combining Experian and CSID capabilities, we will provide best-in-class products to give consumers greater control over their identity and credit information in one proposition. We look forward to welcoming the CSID team to Experian and building stronger and ever more compelling services which help consumers to protect, manage and make the most of their data. Following completion, we expect CSID to be immediately enhancing to Group earnings.”
The market to protect consumers against identity theft is estimated to be around $1.6 billion annually with opportunities for growth, according to a news release from Experian. CSID provides identity protection services in the U.S. The company currently has more than 10 million consumers on its platform.
“CSID uses its patent-protected technology to access a variety of data and scours the internet in real-time to monitor websites, blogs, bulletin boards and chat rooms to identify the illegal trading and selling of personal information,” according to a news release. “It provides a range of services, including credit data, to notify consumers of potential abuse of their identities and that their digital identity information is being actively sold or traded on the internet. This helps consumers to take action to protect themselves.” Its customers include information services companies, retailers, financial institutions, insurance companies and other large institutions.
Experian and CSID have existing commercial relationships and Experian is one of a number of CSID’s data providers.
CSID has raised $36.48 million in three rounds from three investors, according to its Crunchbase profile.
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