International expansion is a growth story—new customers, new markets, and new opportunities. But for privacy and compliance leaders, it’s also a story of uncertainty, complexity, and often, risk. Each new region comes with its own playbook of laws, consent rules, consumer rights, and enforcement standards. What’s acceptable in Texas might trigger an investigation in São Paulo. A data practice that’s routine in California could violate GDPR in Spain.
Despite these challenges, most enterprises treat privacy as an afterthought during expansion. Legal reviews are rushed. Consent models are copy-pasted from other markets. Privacy notices aren’t localized. And teams don’t realize they’ve crossed a regulatory line until a data protection authority—or a class-action lawyer—lets them know.
That’s exactly the trap Bakkt, a publicly traded financial services company, was heading toward. As it expanded from the U.S. into markets like Mexico, Argentina, and the UK, Bakkt realized that its internal privacy frameworks—while robust—weren’t enough to handle the pace and precision required for global compliance. In December 2023, the company received a notification from the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) highlighting privacy concerns on its digital properties. The message was clear: local expectations were not being metBakkt - Privaini Case S….
To avoid further regulatory exposure, Bakkt turned to Privaini. With Privaini’s International Market Expansion capabilities, Bakkt gained the outside-in visibility it needed to monitor evolving global laws and align its operations accordingly. Privaini scanned Bakkt’s public-facing digital assets, benchmarking their privacy posture against local regulations in each of the 22 jurisdictions where the company had a presence or active customers. The insights were immediate—and actionable.
The UK ICO’s concern? Tracking technologies that were deployed before user consent—a violation of UK GDPR and PECR guidelines. Privaini’s review surfaced the exact tags in question, flagged the jurisdictional violation, and generated remediation steps. Within days, Bakkt updated its tracking tech and consent flows, bringing its UK properties into compliance. But that was just the beginning.
Privaini’s platform gave Bakkt the tools to scale compliance across markets without scaling its internal team. For each region, Privaini provided:
• Preemptive Privacy Risk Assessments: Evaluating how local laws like Brazil’s LGPD, Canada’s PIPEDA, or India’s DPDP Act impact Bakkt’s data collection, sharing, and consent practices.
• Tracking Technology Reviews: Detecting cookies, tags, and SDKs active on local sites or apps, and mapping them against regional enforcement trends.
• Policy Alignment Audits: Ensuring privacy notices reflected region-specific rights, data usage, and user controls.
• Regulatory Change Monitoring: Alerting Bakkt when new laws were introduced, or when enforcement patterns shifted in markets like LATAM and APAC.
The result? A global privacy posture that was not only compliant, but defensible—ready for regulators, partners, auditors, and consumers.
This proactive approach is a far cry from the industry norm. Most companies today still operate on a reactive model. Legal teams scramble to interpret new laws after expansion. Marketing teams launch sites and apps with reused consent models. Local privacy disclosures are translated, but not contextualized. And cross-border data transfers—especially in regions with tight sovereignty laws—are left vague or undefined.
It’s a recipe for brand damage. In today’s landscape, enforcement doesn’t wait. Data protection authorities like the CNIL in France, the UK ICO, and Brazil’s ANPD have become increasingly aggressive in pursuing violations related to cookies, consent, and data sharing across jurisdictions. And in the U.S., states like California, Colorado, and Connecticut are beginning to enforce privacy laws with teeth—targeting companies that fail to adjust their practices when serving residents.
Privaini makes this complexity manageable.
Its International Market Expansion capability gives you:
• Global Regulation Mapping: Privaini tracks over 120 active and emerging privacy laws, from GDPR to China’s PIPL to South Africa’s POPIA—so you don’t have to.
• Region-Specific Consent Intelligence: The system knows whether opt-in or opt-out models are required, which data rights must be honored, and how disclosures should be presented in each market.
• Localized Privacy UX Reviews: It simulates how regulators and users experience your digital presence—identifying region-specific tracking issues, consent violations, and missing user controls.
• Enforcement Trend Analysis: Based on recent enforcement activity, Privaini flags which jurisdictions are ramping up action—and which of your practices are likely to trigger attention.
And it doesn’t just tell you what’s wrong—it tells you what to fix, and how. From missing disclosures in Quebec to fingerprinting risks in Italy to excessive permissions in Android apps in India, Privaini helps enterprises translate abstract laws into concrete, prioritized actions.
This visibility is crucial not just for compliance, but for speed. Expansion teams often find themselves slowed by privacy reviews. Legal wants time to vet each launch. Product teams don’t know what rules apply. Marketing teams fear using personalization or analytics tools in regulated markets.
Privaini eliminates that bottleneck.
By providing launch-ready assessments for each region, teams can move fast and stay compliant. Before a new campaign launches in Brazil, Privaini flags any LGPD-sensitive tracking elements. Before a fintech app goes live in the UK, Privaini verifies that all PECR-required consent mechanisms are in place. And before onboarding partners in Argentina or Japan, Privaini evaluates their privacy posture to avoid ecosystem risk.
For executives and boards, this capability becomes a powerful reporting asset. Expansion efforts are tracked alongside privacy posture improvements. Risk exposure is mapped by region. And quarterly reports show how the enterprise is keeping pace with global privacy expectations.
In Bakkt’s case, this translated into more than regulatory avoidance. It became a strategic advantage. The company used its improved privacy posture as a differentiator—demonstrating to investors, partners, and customers that it could operate globally while respecting local privacy norms. It reduced compliance costs, shortened launch timelines, and gained a repeatable playbook for entering new markets safely and smartly.
