IDT Corporation Company
IDT Corporation
IDT was founded by entrepreneur Howard Jonas in August 1990. He founded the company after opening a sales office in Israel, receiving large international phone bills and then discovering a way to lower them by re-originating calls in the United States. In 1996, IDT founded Net2Phone, the world's fourth-largest VoIP provider (2017), and sold an unnamed share of Net2Phone in August 2000 to AT&T for $1.1 billion in cash.
On February 17, 2006, IDT announced it would reacquire full ownership of Net2Phone, a company it had launched in the mid-1990s.
In 2007, IDT would acquire a 53% majority interest in a comic book, graphic novel, art book, and comic strip collection publisher Idea and Design Works, now IDW Media Holdings.
In 2009, IDT introduced Boss Revolution, a PIN-less international prepaid calling service. Boss Revolution PIN-less allows smartphone users to make single touch international calls. Since its introduction, Boss Revolution and other PIN-less providers have largely supplanted the traditional prepaid international calling card industry. IDT subsequently announced initiatives to add various payment services to the Boss Revolution Platform, including international money transfer and cell phone service through Boss Revolution Mobile.
On October 31, 2011, IDT spun off its energy-related businesses to its shareholders as Genie Energy (NYSE: GNE).
In 2015, IDT launched National Retail Solutions (NRSPlus.com).
In January 2017, Net2Phone, subsidiary of IDT Corporation, acquired LiveNinja, a Miami-based messaging and live chat technology startup. LiveNinja’s messaging technology is currently being integrated into its new product now in development. Leveraging LiveNinja’s technology, net2phone will offer a multi-channel platform for Small and medium-sized enterprises that spans phone, messaging, SMS and web chat. The IDT-owned building at 520 Broad Street in downtown Newark was home to the former Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company from 1957 to 2000.
January 2018, IDT began a pilot test on using Ripple's native asset XRP. The aim to simplify cross-border payments, in order to free up billions held in foreign Vostro accounts. This could potentially be an exciting new turning point for the Company, and Ripple could possibly mark the way for future cross-border payments which currently are very expensive and take up to 5 workings days.
