Forter raises USD125m in Series E funding round

Submitted 20/11/2020 - 10:01am

Forter, a specialist in e-commerce fraud prevention, has raised USD125 million in a Series E funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Felix Capital and Itai Tsiddon, with participation from Sequoia Capital, NewView Capital, Scale Venture Partners, March Capital Partners and Commerce Ventures.

The round propels Forter’s valuation to over USD1.3 billion.

The funding will allow Forter to accelerate its vision of establishing an ecosystem of trust across online merchants, banks and payment providers to block fraud and give consumers the trust and convenience to shop freely. The company will continue to expand its suite of solutions and global data network, which has doubled in size over the last 12 months to exceed USD200 billion in annual online transactions protecting over 800 million shoppers.

“We set out to create a global coalition of merchants, banks and payment providers that fight fraud together. We continue on our mission to expand the online network of trust and will continue investing in our platform in collaboration with our customers and partners,” says Michael Reitblat, CEO and Co-founder, Forter. “This year we have doubled our team across eight global offices, doubled our revenue and enjoyed our first cash flow positive quarter. The market traction we have experienced allows us to invest even more into our platform and drive more significant impact for our customers and partners. We will remain an independent company as we continue to grow our footprint across the commerce ecosystem.”

Forter’s real-time, fully automated fraud prevention platform is trusted by numerous top merchants from all commerce verticals including ASOS, Boohoo, Sephora, Hugo Boss and Adobe. The company’s global network provides a comprehensive view of both fraudulent and legitimate customer behaviors, allowing incredibly accurate fraud decisions with enhanced customer experience.

Over the past year, Forter has driven product innovation and extended its partner ecosystem to protect merchants and consumers across the entire e-commerce experience, including:

• Loyalty Program Fraud Protection that secures against account takeover (ATO), new account fraud, transactional fraud and policy abuse; Returns Abuse Protection to identify and stop returns abusers; and Smart Routing, which provides automated payment routing decisions to eliminate false declines and reduce lost revenue by 50 per cent.

• Fraud Prevention Platform for Payment Service Providers (PSPs), enabling PSPs including FreedomPay, FIS Worldpay, Global Payments and Checkout.com to provide the best fraud prevention to their merchants.

• Partnerships and integrations with leaders in the broader e-commerce ecosystem including Mastercard, SAP, Salesforce and Adobe to increase approval rates and eliminate fraud throughout the entire consumer journey. 

“Companies that can allow global organisations to safely embrace and accelerate their digital transformation and increase the lifetime value of their online consumers are invaluable as e-commerce continues to climb,” says Elliott Robinson, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “Forter has turned fraud prevention into a business enabler by uniting the entire digital economy ecosystem to fight fraud together and let people shop safely.”

The impact customers experience with Forter includes:

• 75 per cent reduction in false positives
• 60 per cent reduction in fraud
• Fully automated, real-time decisions across the entire consumer journey

"Working with Forter has changed our approach to fraud management, drastically improving our approval rate, and helping build greater trust in our fraud capabilities,” says Kristina Blahnik, CEO, Manolo Blahnik. “We can now provide a more positive, seamless experience for our clients as well as strengthening our e-commerce; priorities which are paramount for Manolo Blahnik."

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