Sift 50m 1b ann Azevedotechcrunch: Cybercriminals have had a field day as digital transactions have risen during the past year.
According to the FBI’s 2020 Internet Crime Report, there were 61% more reports of suspected internet crime in 2020, totaling 791,790. More than $4.2 billion was spent on victims of these crimes, including credit card fraud, phishing, identity theft, and personal and business data breaches.
That rise in crime also boosted business for organizations like Sift, which attempts to predict and stop online fraud even faster than fraudsters adopt new techniques.
Suspected internet crime
The San Francisco-based corporation doubled its risk assessment from the previous year to more than $250 billion in transactions. With over a hundred clients, including Twitter, Airbnb, Twilio, DoorDash, Wayfair, and McDonald’s, the business manages a global data network that processes 70 billion monthly events.
Sift 50m 1b ann Azevedotechcrunch: Sift said today that it had secured $50 million in a fundraising round that values the company at over $1 billion to fulfill the demand spike. Union Square Ventures and Stripes joined Insight Partners in leading the funding.
President and CEO Marc Olesen said that sales have tripled since he joined the company in June 2018 despite the company declining to provide specific revenue data. Sift was created in 2011 after graduating from Y Combinator and has already raised $157 million.
“Digital Trust & Safety” platform of the business:
With the company’s “Digital Trust & Safety” technology, retailers may combat various forms of online fraud and abuse and “reduce friction” for loyal customers. There seems to be a narrow line between protecting a business and offending a customer who is honestly attempting to complete a transaction.
Using machine learning and artificial intelligence, sift automatically determines whether an attempted online transaction or interaction with a business is genuine or potentially problematic.
The business has learned, among other things, that fraudsters frequently collaborate.
Sift 50m 1b ann Azevedotechcrunch: The vectors of fraud are no longer isolated. They frequently collaborate and are very innovative, according to Olesen. “We’ve found several fraud rings,”
Olesen gave a few instances of how the business stopped fraud incidences last year. One recent instance was money laundering through contribution sites, where con artists tested stolen debit and credit cards at guest checkout using phony donation sites.
In a different instance, the business discovered fraudsters using the social media platform Telegram to provide services, including meal delivery, with stolen credentials.
Sift claims that its models get more imaginative with each customer it joins and that the data it has gathered since its beginnings let the firm “serve as the central nervous system for fraud teams.”
Jeff Lieberman, managing director of Insight Partners and a member of the Sift board, said his company first invested in Sift in 2016 because it was already apparent that online fraud was “rapidly growing not just in terms of dollar amounts but also in terms of the variety of techniques cybercriminals were employing to steal from consumers and businesses.
“Sift has a novel approach:
He wrote in an email. “Sift offers an innovative strategy to combating fraud that combines enormous data sets with machine learning. And it has a track record of showing its worth for hundreds of online businesses.
Insight reached out to Olesen and the Sift team before they began talking to outside investors during the most recent financing round “because both the product and company fundamentals are so solid. And the growth opportunity is tremendous,” Lieberman added.
Nearly all companies need a solution that can effectively pick out fraud while guaranteeing a flawless experience for the 99% of transactions or actions that are real, he noted, as more organizations spend extensively in online channels.
The company intends to utilize new funding to scale its creation, engineering, and sales teams and broaden its product offering.
Eu-Gene Sung, who has held financial leadership positions at Integral Ad Science, BSE Global, and McCann. Was most recently hired by Sift as its CFO.
Olesen responded that Sung’s expertise in leading businesses through development phases like the one. Sift is going through would be beneficial in determining whether or not an IPO is in Sift’s near future. The business is also investigating prospective M&A deals for the first time.
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