Equifax and GBG Expand Global Partnership

WHY THIS MATTERS

The expansion of the global partnership between Equifax (NYSE: EFX) and GBG (LSE: GBG) into the United States on May 20, 2026, represents a heavy-weapons escalation in the war against AI-driven financial crime. Digital onboarding has entered a treacherous era. The democratization of generative AI tools has allowed criminal syndicates to industrialize the creation of synthetic identities—where real Social Security numbers are combined with fabricated names and addresses to build fake, “ghost” credit profiles.

This cross-border alliance combines Equifax’s massive consumer database with GBG’s premier global location intelligence. By embedding Equifax’s Identity and Fraud solutions natively into the GBG Go adaptive identity platform, U.S. businesses can instantly query behavioral trust signals harvested from over 60 billion consumer interactions. At the same time, Equifax will ingest GBG’s specialized data verification capabilities to validate addresses and physical locations in real time. For the financial services and e-commerce sectors, this data exchange closes a vital loophole: it allows automated onboarding systems to differentiate between a living consumer and an AI-generated synthetic profile, a threat projected by Deloitte to inflict at least $23 billion in losses by 2030.

Equifax® (NYSE: EFX), a global data, analytics, and technology company, and GBG (LSE: GBG), a global identity and location technology business, are expanding their global partnership into the United States and strengthening the power of their identity and fraud protection offerings globally. As part of this expanded relationship, Equifax Identity and Fraud solutions will be integrated into GBG’s adaptive identity platform, GBG Go. This will allow more businesses to leverage proprietary Equifax data to protect themselves from the rising cost of fraud – critical when synthetic identity fraud alone is expected to generate at least $23 billion in losses by 20301. 

“Equifax and GBG have collaborated for nearly a decade and share a strong commitment to providing global organisations with the robust, data-driven defenses required to address digital and AI-based fraud,” said Mark W. Begor, Chief Executive Officer, Equifax. “Equifax maintains proprietary trust and fraud signals from more than 60 billion consumer interactions – powerful, unique data that differentiates our AI-driven identity and fraud solutions in the industry. The expanded partnership empowers even more businesses to benefit from a powerful combination of proprietary data and world-class identity and fraud technology”. 

By integrating Equifax Identity and Fraud solutions into GBG Go, GBG customers globally can take advantage of Equifax differentiated data to enrich identity resolution and harden fraud defenses. This unique data enables businesses to confidently recognise and onboard more genuine customers as well as making it easier to detect synthetic identity fraud, combat credit ghosting, and reduce first-party fraud through real-time identity proofing.   

Additionally, as part of the expanded partnership, Equifax will integrate GBG’s data verification capabilities in the U.S this year, with global use in 2027, helping Equifax more confidently verify addresses and locations in real time.  

“The identity and fraud landscape is changing rapidly, and businesses need data-driven solutions that enable both trust and growth,” said Dev Dhiman, Chief Executive Officer, GBG. “Together with Equifax, we’re helping global organisations respond to increasingly sophisticated fraud while scaling confidently. We’re already successfully leveraging Equifax proprietary data to power faster, more accurate identity verification in key markets across the globe – and this expansion allows us to bring those proven capabilities, together with robust fraud protection, to the U.S. market.” 

FF NEWS TAKE

Equifax and GBG are demonstrating that the only effective defense against AI-powered fraud is a multi-dimensional, sovereign data wall. For nearly a decade, these two giants have collaborated across international markets. Bringing this integration to the United States is a calculated land grab for enterprise identity verification spend. In 2026, standalone credit bureau checks or isolated geolocation tracking are no longer sufficient to secure a digital perimeter. Fraudsters routinely bypass single-factor risk metrics by exploiting the blind spots between credit history data and physical location records.

By stitching these two components into a single, cohesive API footprint, GBG CEO Dev Dhiman and Equifax CEO Mark Begor are drastically reducing integration friction for corporate risk officers. The commercial benefits are two-sided: GBG gains an unshakeable competitive advantage in the lucrative U.S. fintech market by wielding Equifax’s proprietary credit signals, while Equifax can scale its international footprint by leveraging GBG’s location engine globally starting in 2027. In a macroeconomic climate where first-party fraud and credit ghosting are actively eroding retail banking margins, this unified platform gives compliance teams the precise intelligence required to approve genuine applications in seconds while systematically choking out algorithmic bad actors.