rewrite this title ID-Pal Acquires KYB Specialist, NorthRow – Finovate

ID-Pal’s strategic acquisition of NorthRow, a specialist in compliance solutions, will enhance the Irish company’s compliance intelligence for Know Your Business (KYB), Know Your Customer (KYC), and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) operations. The move will combine ID-Pal’s AI-powered verification platform with NorthRow’s expertise in KYB and business due diligence, enabling ID-Pal to offer a single solution for ensuring one perpetual risk view for both individuals and organizations.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but post-acquisition, NorthRow’s services and operations will operate without interruption under ID-Pal. The acquisition comes at a time when new regulations in the UK, and the US Corporate Transparency Act, are putting pressure on compliance teams and making strategies like continuous KYC, AML, and KYB monitoring essential features.

In a statement on the company’s website, ID-Pal Founder and CEO Colum Lyons put the acquisition in the context of his own firm’s founding. “Alongside co-founders James O’Toole and Robert O’Farrell, ID-Pal was created to support businesses with accurate identity verification built on privacy preservation,” Lyons said. “As the financial services space becomes more regulated, and with AI-driven document fraud becoming the biggest threat our industry has faced, it is essential that businesses have a unified view of the risks ahead and how to manage them. Our acquisition of NorthRow allows ID-Pal to unify this process with one comprehensive platform that defends businesses against fraud at every entry point and avoids noncompliance fines.”

The acquisition builds on ID-Pal’s identity verification tools, adding native end-to-end KYB checks to provide continuous monitoring of changes in a business’s status, structure, or directors. The deal also helps ID-Pal deliver on its goal of providing scalable, AI-powered solutions that can tackle ever-evolving compliance challenges. NorthRow’s technology will help companies adapt to regulatory changes worldwide by providing real-time data on companies, from ownership structure to financial health.

ID-Pal will also benefit from expanding its portfolio with major financial services companies such as Caxton, Equifax, and Hargreaves Lansdown. Caxton COO Alana Parsons praised the strategic acquisition for creating “a powerful platform for the future.” Parsons added, “We’re excited to start working with ID-Pal and to benefit from the innovation in KYC and KYB risk intelligence that this partnership will deliver.”

ID-Pal most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2025 in New York. At the conference, the company showed how its ID-Detect solution provides an additional layer of verification designed to detect evidence of document fraud. ID-Detect is a standard feature of ID-Pal’s identity verification, helping businesses deal with the growing challenge of AI-generated fake identification cards and other documents. ID-Pal’s technology is used in more than 250 jurisdictions, covering more than 16,000 document types and accessing 400+ trusted data sources.

Photo by Caio Cardenas

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