Airbnb to acquire Trooly, a startup that specializes in background check authentication

Airbnb is planning to add to its capabilities to prevent fraudulent individuals from scamming customers on its platform. Bloomberg reports that Airbnb has decided to buy Trooly, an unknown startup that specializes in background check authentication. The acquisition has been confirmed over email by an Airbnb spokesperson; financial terms, however,  have not been disclosed.

The Airbnb spokesperson said about the acquisition, "We look forward to welcoming the Trooly team to Airbnb in the coming weeks. We’ll continue working together to better facilitate trust between strangers on, off and across the platform — supporting Airbnb’s overall strategy to create the world where anyone can belong anywhere."

citing sources, the report said that Airbnb is acquiring intellectual property and engineering team to further build upon its fraudulent detection tools. This will be an extension of the long-standing partnership between Airbnb and Trooly since Airbnb has been employing Trooly's technology to authenticate user identities on its platform.

Airbnb now believes that a deeper integration of Trooly's technology into their services will be beneficial for Airbnb whose been growing as a platform since last year. It has already upgraded its policies and added two-factor authentication to seal some security loopholes.