Fintech startup raises $200 million to fight digital banking fraud

Woman's hand on a smartphone showing a mobile banking app

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are the future. Meanwhile, cyber crime, money laundering and online financial fraud are becoming bigger problems by the day. To help combat these rising issues, fintech startup Feedzai has raised $200 million, pushing its value to over $1 billion.

Feedzai said it would use the money to expand its product range and speed up its global expansion. The money will also fund further research and development into artificial intelligence and machine learning and their potential to fight cyber crime.

“Feedzai was born to fight financial crime using advanced machine learning,” said company CEO and chairman Nuno Sebastiao. “We’re passionate about cutting-edge technology, artificial intelligence, and contributing to the end of human suffering caused by fraud and money laundering.”

Feedzai’s clients include major companies like Citigroup, Fiserv, Banco Santander, and SoFi. Feedzai says its customers include four of the five biggest banks in North America, 80% of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 150 million individual and business taxpayers in the US.

It’s no secret that cyber crime is rising. As the COVID-19 pandemic pushes more commerce online, the scale of digital payments and digital banking has boomed. This has caused banks and financial firms to look for state-of-the-art technology to prevent online crime.

Feedzai says its AI and machine learning systems are always “learning” from more data, making them continually more useful, versatile, and effective.

“When the challenges of the past year hit, we leaned on our ‘future-proof’ mantra, and it worked. We were ready for the rapid shift to a digital-first banking and commerce world,” Sebastiao said.

“This new investment delivers on our mission to keep commerce safe by further developing our single machine learning cloud platform for all four stages of the customer risk journey: prevention, detection, remediation, and compliance,” he added. “Focusing on the entirety of the risk life cycle allows us to partner with financial services in a radically new way at every step of the journey.”