Prytek acquires Scanovate for $50 million as it expands its financial infrastructure business
The deal brings bootstrapped Israeli digital identity company Scanovate and two subsidiaries into Prytek’s growing network of technology businesses serving financial institutions. The transaction is expected to reach $100 million in value and gives Scanovate access to Prytek’s global customer base and infrastructure.
Prytek Group is expanding its presence in Israel with the acquisition of the activity of Israeli digital identity company Scanovate and two of its subsidiaries in a deal valued at about $50 million in its first phase. The transaction is expected to generate shareholder value of up to $100 million as Prytek folds the businesses into its growing ecosystem of technology and financial services companies.
Scanovate, founded in 2014 by CEO Amir Fishman and CTOs Roy Fishman and Irad Gilboa, develops technology that allows large organizations to identify customers, manage digital identities and maintain data integrity while complying with regulatory requirements. Its technology enables customers to scan identification documents such as ID cards directly from mobile devices.
The bootstrapped company operates across North America, South America, Western Europe and Israel and serves more than 250 customers, including about 120 financial institutions. Its Israeli customers include major banks, credit card companies and insurance companies.
The acquisition also brings two additional businesses into Prytek. Israeli company Cellosign, founded in 2017 by CEO Zack Zigherman and CTO Kobi Segev, develops technology for converting business, marketing and regulatory processes into fully digital, end-to-end processes. Its platform handles data collection and processing and connects internal and external customers through digital journeys.
The second business, ADO Technologies, operates in Colombia and is led by CEO Doron Shlomo and CTO Alon Ofir. It specializes in digital identity verification and biometric authentication in accordance with local regulations and serves as Prytek’s point of contact in Latin America for identity verification.
For Prytek, the transaction is part of a broader strategy to build a collection of technology and service businesses serving major financial institutions. Founded about a decade ago, the group operates an ecosystem spanning data, software and software-as-a-service businesses for global financial clients, from major banks to fintech companies.
Prytek currently operates in 14 countries and says it serves more than 500 Tier 1 clients worldwide, with more than 1,500 employees across the companies in its group.
Its model is based in part on combining businesses that retain their operational independence with shared access to customers, infrastructure and management resources. When a company joins the group, its founder or CEO becomes part of the leadership of the wider organization while continuing to run the business they built and remaining responsible for its performance.
The approach is particularly relevant to Scanovate because of the difficulty smaller technology companies face in selling to large financial institutions. Fishman said that while the company had a strong product, establishing institutional relationships and entering new markets independently was a much harder challenge.
“As the CEO of a software company, I know firsthand the difficulty for companies of our size to grow and penetrate new markets on their own,” Fishman said. “Building institutional trust with banks and large financial institutions is a slow, expensive, and sometimes impossible process for a company of our size.”
Fishman said Prytek offered Scanovate access to an existing international customer base, infrastructure and sister companies that had already entered markets the company wanted to reach.
“This is not just access to a new market,” he said. “It is an opportunity to take the company’s products and solutions to additional markets, and place them in front of customers who would have taken us years to reach on our own.”
Following the transaction, Scanovate will lead Prytek’s customer lifecycle management, or CLM, segment. It will continue developing products in cooperation with other companies in the group, including Delta Capita and Israeli investment research company TipRanks, while expanding its activities in Israel and internationally.
Prytek founder and CEO Andrey Yashunsky argues that these relationships are becoming particularly important as advances in AI make the underlying technology behind some financial products easier and faster to develop.
“In the AI era, where technology is rapidly becoming a commodity, a technology product can be built in months,” Yashunsky said. “What is much harder to replicate is the trust of institutional clients, global reach, operational infrastructure and relationships built over years.”
The transaction was supported legally by attorneys Dr. Tal Tirosh of APM and Osher Ben Ezri.
