rewrite this title Ping Identity Acquires Best of Show Winner Keyless – Finovate

Digital identity company Ping Identity has agreed to acquire UK-based biometric authentication firm Keyless. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Ping Identity will integrate Keyless’ Zero-Knowledge Biometrics technology into its platform to enable business to enhance their fraud prevention and user verification processes.

Ping Identity has been a Finovate alum since its appearance at FinovateEurope 2012. Keyless won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Digital identity company Ping Identity has agreed to acquire UK-based biometric authentication specialist—and FinovateEurope 2025 Best of Show winner—Keyless. Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed, and the transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

“In an era where trust is continuously tested, organizations must deliver digital experiences that are more secure, private, and effortless,” Ping Identity CEO and Founder Andre Durand said. “By joining forces with Keyless, we aim to make privacy-preserving authentication as simple as a glance—building greater confidence into every digital interaction.”

With its Zero-Knowledge Biometrics technology, Keyless separates itself from traditional biometric authentication solutions in a number of ways. Requiring a only single glance at the camera, Keyless’ technology verifies the user’s face and device against enrollment data, leveraging cryptographic techniques that prevent biometric data from being stored in a retrievable form. This prevents the data from being reconstructed and potentially linked back to the original image—whether on the device or in the cloud. Additionally, Keyless does not require a dedicated device, which makes the technology easier to deploy across a range of different environments and user groups.

The technology helps defend users against fraud techniques such as account takeover, providing instant biometric authentication and deepfake detection for frontline and mobile workers with sub-300ms performance benchmarks. Keyless also supports employees with passwordless multi-factor authentication and seamless single sign-on (SSO) for easier, stronger access. The technology is also designed to enhance readiness for a variety of international regulatory compliance standards for privacy including GDPR, CCPA, and PSD3.

“Trust lies at the heart of every digital relationship,” Keyless CEO and Co-Founder Andrea Carmignani said. “This acquisition will help to embed trust throughout the identity journey—from verification to authentication to authorization—and reflects our shared commitment to a more secure, seamless, and private world.”

Per the acquisition, Ping Identity will integrate Keyless’ privacy-preserving biometric authentication into its platform to enable businesses to enhance their fraud prevention and user verification processes without adding friction to the user experience. The acquisition also helps Ping Identity manifest its One Platform vision of providing verified trust across all identities, including customer identity and access management (CIAM) workforce, and B2B use cases. This vision also means delivering secure, passwordless access for frontline, shared terminal, and manufacturing environments.

Headquartered in Denver, Colorado and founded in 2003, Ping Identity first demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2012. Today, the identity verification innovator boasts 99.99% uptime and more than three billion identities under management. The company’s acquisition announcement comes in the wake of a survey it conducted that indicated that while AI use is climbing rapidly, its impact on customer trust has been increasingly problematic. “AI and the rise of agents is compounding the attack on trust, making threats more persuasive and harder to detect, which raises the stakes for identity verification and protection,” Ping Identity VP of Consumer Segment Strategy Darryl Jones said.

Winning Best of Show in its FinovateEurope 2025, Keyless was founded in 2019 and is based in London. The company’s privacy-preserving biometric authentication technology has helped banks, fintechs, crypto platforms, and more reduce account takeover incidents, secure high-risk transactions, and boost operational efficiency. Keyless’ Zero-Knowledge Biometrics solution provides multi-factor authentication with a single glance at the camera, delivering results in 300 milliseconds without storing valuable biometric information.

Last month, Keyless announced that it had been named a “Luminary” in Acuity Market Intelligence’s Biometric Digital Identity Privacy and Compliance Prism Report. In September, Keyless was featured in Gartner’s Emerging Tech Impact Radar: Disinformation Security for its innovations in biometric continuous identity assurance.

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