London-based fraud detection tech startup Ravelin raises $20 million in Series C funding

Ravelin, a London, England-based fraud detection tech startup and a pioneer in the use of machine learning and graph network technologies to help online businesses accept more payments with confidence, announced today it  has raised $20 million (£16.4 M) in Series C funding  to continue stellar growth in new markets. The round was led by Draper Esprit, with participation from existing investors Amadeus Capital Partners, BlackFin Tech, and Passion Capital.

Founded in 2014 by Martin Sweeney (CEO), Leonard Austin, Mairtin O’Riada, Nick Lally, and Stephen Whitworth, Ravelin is a smart fraud detection and prevention platform that helps companies stop online payment fraud. Ravelin provides technology and support to help online businesses prevent evolving fraud threats and accept payments with confidence. Combining machine-learning and graph network visualisation, Ravelin helps businesses draw deeper insights from their customer data to detect fraud, account takeover and promotion abuse and increase payment acceptance.

Ravelin made its reputation by securing transactions for large-scale food and cab-ride marketplaces. The company has since expanded into travel, ticketing, entertainment, gaming, gambling, and retail. It has marquee clients in each sector globally and since its previous funding round in September 2018 Ravelin has helped these businesses to accept over 1.2 billion transactions, secure over 230 million active user accounts, and use machine learning to block 4 million fraudulent accounts which attempted to place 14.7 million orders worth $53 billion.

In addition, Ravelin has used its graph networks to block another 1.6 million fraudulent accounts which attempted to place 7.4 million orders worth $17 billion and 14 Million compromised accounts identified and secured since in 2020.

The raise of £16.4M will help Ravelin reach more global markets and industries. Key to this expansion is Fiserv, a leading global provider of payments and financial services technology solutions that recently selected Ravelin technology as a component of its Fraud Detect solution. Leveraging real-time fraud scoring and machine learning capabilities, Fraud Detect from Fiserv is used today by leading global brands to reduce their overall exposure and cost of fraud across digital commerce channels.

Ravelin’s ability to rapidly develop custom machine learning models for each client and provide support and expert insight from investigations specialists has won over many clients from traditional rules based fraud products. Building solutions from the client data up is being proven again and again as the only way to tackle fraud at scale.

“We have been very busy in the two years since our last funding round in 2018. Our approach to tackling fraud and risk for enterprise-scale businesses has resonated with the market and we’ve grown our client base rapidly”, said Martin Sweeney, CEO of Ravelin. “The opportunity now is to balance adding new clients while continuing to invest in innovations to make them successful. We’re delighted to have closed this round so we can pursue such opportunities quickly.”

In addition to identifying card fraud Ravelin works with clients to find compromised accounts (often called Account Takeover), spotting incentive abuse and tackling supplier fraud in marketplaces. It has also developed Ravelin Accept aimed at helping businesses navigate PDS2. This Series C round will help drive those innovations.

“Our model is to invest in innovation over the long term,” said Vinoth Jayakumar at Draper Esprit. “Ravelin perfectly aligns with that thesis. The team at Ravelin are world-class and continue to work to push the boundaries of their products. Their client list is impressive; however what got us really excited was the range of problems they solve for clients and the suite of products they are developing. That level of deep partnerships with clients is rare; when we find it, we know something special is in the making.”

“We have always been impressed by the vision of the team and their unique ability to leverage the best AI technologies to tackle a major and growing pain point of online payment. That’s why we were keen on significantly reinvesting in this round”, said Maxime Mandin, Investment Director at BlackFin Tech.