eCommerce Fraud Prevention Firm Forter Raises $50 Million
27.9.2018 securityweek Crime

Forter, a company that specializes in preventing e-commerce fraud, on Wednesday announced that it raised $50 million in a series D funding round.

The round was led by March Capital Partners, with participation from Salesforce Ventures and previous investors Sequoia Capital, Scale Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates. The money will be used to fuel the expansion of the company's fraud prevention platform.

The latest funding round brings the total raised by Forter since its launch in 2013 to $100 million.

Forter provides an AI-powered platform designed to identify fraud in real time. The company says its solution can differentiate legitimate customers from fraudsters based on a database of 175 million identities and a combination of 6,000 event and decision data points, including site visits, orders, account sign-ups, transaction data, account activity, buying patterns, and change of information.

Forter says its platform is capable of identifying attempts to hijack legitimate accounts, and attempts to abuse accounts, loyalty programs, and referrals and promos. It can also detect when fraudsters attempt to return goods for a full refund after using them.

A study conducted recently by the company showed that account takeover attempts increased by 53% in the last year.

Forter, which recently opened its first office in Europe, says it processes transactions totaling over $50 billion every year and its platform covers more than 180 million consumers in the United States.

Forter claims its customer base has tripled in the past year and that it includes Fortune 500 retailers and other companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

“We’ve been seeing a major trend of offline commerce shifting online and the Forter team has built a solution to detect and prevent fraud across the payments ecosystem with the advantage of next-generation technology that leverages machine learning,” said Jamie Montgomery, Managing Director at March Capital Partners. “We’re excited to be involved with a company on the forefront of their industry and to watch Forter evolve as the fraud landscape grows more complex.”