SAN FRANCISCO & INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 5, 2026--
Bolt, the checkout, identity, and payments company behind the Bolt SuperApp, today announced a strategic partnership with Socure to supercharge Bolt ID, Bolt’s checkout-native identity layer designed to verify real people in real time at the moment of purchase.
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Bolt has built a powerful ecosystem of merchants and consumers, with identity checks embedded directly into checkout. By integrating Socure’s RiskOS platform, Bolt ID now delivers a network-wide ecommerce identity layer powered by Socure’s global Identity Graph, predictive risk signals, and compliance decisioning.
Together, the solution strengthens identity confidence across merchants, helps onboard more trusted shoppers, reduces fraud and false positives, and keeps checkout fast and seamless. Ultimately, the supercharged Bolt ID lowers fraud risk, fees, and operational burden for businesses.
“Think of it like lending money to a trusted friend instead of a stranger. When uncertainty drops, everything gets easier and cheaper,” said Justin Grooms, President of Bolt. “Bolt ID is designed to authenticate real people, not just score transactions. Socure provides the identity intelligence that helps us understand when a shopper’s signals don’t add up so we can stop sophisticated fraud in checkout without compromising trust, privacy, or conversion.”
Since launching last year, Bolt ID has focused on one of the most damaging and difficult fraud challenges facing merchants: synthetic identities. Rather than relying solely on static onboarding checks, Bolt ID is now able to evaluate identity trust dynamically at checkout using signals informed by Socure’s RiskOS platform. This allows Bolt to detect high-risk behavior at the moment it matters most, without forging legitimate shoppers through repetitive verification steps. Behind the scenes, Socure’s Hosted Flows enabled Bolt to stand up the required onboarding and identity verification experience in just weeks, accelerating Bolt ID’s path from concept to production.
With a higher degree of certainty that a shopper is who they claim to be, merchants using Bolt ID see:
“Socure exists to provide the highest fidelity of identity trust at an unparalleled scale, and our execution with Bolt ID is a powerful example of that in action,” said Johnny Ayers, Founder and CEO of Socure. “By enabling Bolt to launch a secure onboarding and checkout experience in just weeks, and replace a fragmented vendor stack with a single intelligence layer, we’re showing how our Identity Graph intelligence can be applied to detect synthetic identities and stop fraud that no other provider can. The result is a new model for commerce where identity, authentication, and fraud prevention work together seamlessly to protect merchants and consumers alike.”
As Bolt continues to expand Bolt ID as a core layer of its SuperApp, Socure’s trusted Identity Graph will support a broader roadmap that includes low-friction authentication for trusted consumers, adaptive protections against emerging abuse, and cross-merchant trust signals that reduce the need for repeat verification.
About Bolt
Bolt is the checkout, identity and payments leader powering faster, smarter commerce. Its B2B and B2C offerings form a complementary ecosystem: merchants like Revolve, Kendra Scott and Lilly Pulitzer use Bolt to boost conversion and loyalty, while 80M+ shoppers benefit from one-click checkout and a secure, cross-site identity. Bolt's core product suite—CheckoutOS, Bolt Ignite and the SuperApp, a new all-in-one finance and crypto hub—helps merchants grow while giving consumers convenience and control. From high-risk processing to one-click subscriptions, Bolt replaces fragmented tools with future-ready infrastructure that scales. The result: a frictionless, trusted journey for shoppers—and powerful growth for businesses of all sizes.
About Socure
Socure is the leading platform for digital identity verification, compliance, and fraud prevention solutions, trusted by the largest enterprises and government agencies to build trust and mitigate risk. Leveraging AI and machine learning, Socure’s industry-leading platform achieves the highest accuracy, automation, and capture rates in the industry.
Serving more than 3,000 customers and 190+ countries across financial services, government, gaming, healthcare, telecom, and e-commerce, Socure’s customer base includes 18 of the top 20 banks, four of the Mag 7, the largest HR payroll and workforce providers, the largest sportsbook and prediction market operators, 130+ organizations across the public sector, and more than 600 fintechs.
Leading organizations trust Socure to deliver certainty in identity across onboarding, authentication, payments, account changes, and regulatory compliance. Learn more at www.socure.com.
Bolt ID now backs Bolt’s commerce network with Socure’s global Identity Graph signals to deliver an unmatched ecommerce identity trust layer.
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Andrés Velásquez didn’t stick around to become one more government critic jailed after Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election.
A former governor who had crisscrossed Venezuela stumping for then-President Nicolás Maduro's opponent in the disputed race, he grew a thick beard, sent his children into exile and avoided public events that could expose him to arrest.
But in the aftermath of Maduro's overthrow by the U.S., he mustered the courage to speak out. First, on Jan. 19, Velásquez, with his new look, appeared in a video in which he expressed support for Maduro's removal while calling for new elections. Then, a few days later, he stuck his neck out even further, shooting a short video outside the infamous Helicoide prison in the capital, Caracas, to demand the release of all political prisoners.
“We must dismantle the entire repressive apparatus in the hands of the state,” Velásquez said in the video. “Venezuela will be free!”
Velásquez isn't alone. Since Maduro's ouster, a number of prominent critics have started to emerge from hiding to test the limits of political speech after years of self-imposed silence driven by fear. Regular Venezuelans are also throwing off restraint, with families of jailed activists protesting outside prisons and those freed defying gag orders normally imposed as a condition for release. Meanwhile, media outlets have begun re-opening their airwaves to critical voices banished in recent years.
The political liberalization, while still incipient, was likened by Velásquez to glasnost, referring to the era of reforms and freer public debate that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union. But unlike that and other democratic openings, this one is taking place almost entirely under the tutelage of the Trump administration, which has used a combination of financial incentives and threats of additional military strikes to carry out the president's seemingly improbable pledge to “run” Venezuela from Washington.
The ultimate goal of the Trump administration's maneuvers is still unknown. As the White House has heaped praise on acting President Delcy Rodríguez's willingness to partner with the U.S. to open up Venezuela's vast oil reserves, combat criminal networks and curb the influence of American adversaries Iran and Russia, the government's opponents have expressed concern that its demands for elections and a restoration of democracy could be indefinitely delayed.
Last week, Rodríguez, a longtime Maduro ally, announced plans for a general amnesty that could lead to the release of hundreds of opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. She also announced the shutdown of Helicoide, vowing to transform the spiral-shaped building — a futuristic architectural icon transfigured into a symbol of Maduro's dungeons — into a sports and cultural complex for police and residents of surrounding hillside slums.
“May this law serve to heal the wounds left by the political confrontation fueled by violence and extremism,” she said at an event surrounded by ruling-party stalwarts.
Pedro Vaca, the top freedom of expression expert for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the region's most respected rights watchdog, said the few “breadcrumbs” offered by Rodríguez's administration are no substitute for an independent judiciary and law enforcement.
“Venezuela’s civic space is still a desert,” said Vaca, who has been trying for months to secure permission from Venezuelan officials to lead an on-the-ground assessment mission to the country. “The few critical voices emerging are seeds breaking through hardened ground, surviving not because freedom exists, but because repression has loosened while remaining ever-present. Let us be clear: this does not mark a democratic turning point.”
Political pluralism was severely eroded in Venezuela after Maduro took over the presidency from the late Hugo Chávez in 2013. Anti-government protests and episodes of civil unrest were regularly crushed by security forces whose loyalty to the self-proclaimed socialist leader proved unflinching if powerless against a far-superior U.S. military.
The self-censorship deepened following the July 2024 elections, when Maduro launched a wave of repression marked by thousands of arbitrary detentions as he disavowed evidence showing he had lost the contested ballot to the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, by a more than two-to-one margin.
Dissidents went into hiding, and the few remaining independent news outlets softened their already cautious coverage for fear of being unplugged.
In an interview with the AP, Velásquez said he will continue to push the envelope of allowed political activity but remains wary because the state’s repressive apparatus continues to be entirely under the control of Rodríguez and her allies.
“We must continue winning back lost terrain, challenging power. An opportunity has opened up and we can’t let it close again,” he said. “But the biggest obstacle we have to overcome is fear.”
In the coming weeks, he’s looking to organize a public event with other government opponents who have recently come out of hiding. Among them is Delsa Solórzano, a former lawmaker who was also a fixture of the opposition’s 2024 presidential campaign. Solórzano last week resurfaced publicly at a rare press conference for her party, describing with tears how she had to take Vitamin D to compensate for the lack of sunlight while living clandestinely.
“I didn’t hide because I committed any crime but because here fighting for freedom became an extremely high risk -- to your life, your freedom and your safety,” Solórzano said.
Media outlets have also started flexing more muscle.
Venevision, which like most private networks dropped coverage critical of the government in recent years, has reopened its airwaves to anti-government voices, covering opposition leader Maria Corina Machado’s every move in Washington since Maduro’s capture.
Meanwhile, Globovision, the nation’s largest private broadcaster, whose owner is sanctioned by the U.S. for his ties to Maduro, invited back prominent commentator Vladimir Villegas for the first time in years.
Villegas earned a reputation for deftly navigating Venezuela's already restricted airwaves by keeping the government's most hardened opponents off his influential political talk show. But the show was abruptly canceled in 2020 when Villegas criticized Maduro for forcing DirecTV to carry state TV in violation of U.S. sanctions, a move that forced the satellite TV provider — and its assortment of international news outlets — to abandon the country.
Rodríguez herself hasn’t embraced meaningful public debate of the nation’s problems other than announcing the creation of an advisory commission on political co-existence to be headed by Villegas' brother, Culture Minister Ernesto Villegas.
But already some of her allies seem intent on shutting down any criticism. Meanwhile, authorities have yet to restore full access to the social media platform X, which Maduro blocked after its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, accused him of stealing the 2024 vote.
In response to Venevision’s coverage of Machado’s meeting in Washington with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello — a hardliner wanted by the U.S. on a drug warrant — accused the media of playing into a plot by the Nobel Prize winner to sow chaos in Venezuela.
“Without media attention, her notoriety fades away. Without headlines, she simply disappears,” Cabello warned on state TV, singling out Venevision’s coverage.
But even on state TV — long a bastion of pro-government propaganda and ideological control — cracks have started to appear.
Case in point: Rodríguez's recent tour of a university campus in Caracas in which she was confronted by a small group of student protesters. While state TV made no mention of the students’ demands, the scene itself — in which a Rodríguez was shown calmly separating from her security entourage to “exchange ideas” with what the broadcaster called activists from “extremist parities” — would have been unthinkable a few weeks ago.
Under Maduro, even the mildest of criticism was buried on state TV and broadcasts of the president's frequent rallies and outdoor events stopped airing live after a series of embarrassing disruptions, including a 2016 visit to Margarita Island in which he was driven away by a group of angry, pot-banging protesters.
While the outlook for an eventual democratic transition in Venezuela remains unknown, government opponents hope Rodriguez is unleashing forces that are beyond her control. Meanwhile, they continue to draw inspiration from those who suffered repression firsthand.
Journalist and political activist Carlos Julio Rojas spent 638 days in a Venezuelan prison where, like dozens of other prisoners, he said he was repeatedly handcuffed, denied sunlight and confined to a tiny cell with no bed — sometimes for weeks at a time.
When he was released last month as part of a goodwill gesture announced by Rodríguez, he says he was instructed to never discuss the abuse.
His mandated silence lasted barely 15 days.
“For me, not speaking meant I still felt imprisoned. Not speaking was a form of torture,” said Rojas, who was accused without proof of participating in a 2024 assassination plot against Maduro. “So, today, I decided to remove the gag and speak.”
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Goodman reported from Washington
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
This story is part of an ongoing collaboration between The Associated Press and FRONTLINE (PBS) that includes an upcoming documentary.
Opposition leader Andrés Velásquez is seen in his office in Caracas, Venezuela. (AP Photo/Juan Pablo Arraez)
Opposition leader Andrés Velásquez sits at his office in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Juan Pablo Arraez)
