Online fraud detection startup CashShield, whose clients include Alibaba and Razer, announced today that it has raised a $20 million Series B led by Temasek Holdings and returning investor GGV Capital. Participants also included Next co-founder Tony Fadell, another returning investor, Wavemaker Partners and Tao Zhang.
CashShield says it has now raised a total of $25.5 million, including a Series A announced last September. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Singapore, CashShield also has offices in Europe, China and the United States, where it launched last year and now counts Yamibuy and Scalefast among its users. CashShield claims its technology currently secures about 10 million user accounts and $500 million GMV in transactions each month.
The startup says personal account data is much more valuable than credit card information, because it can sell for 60 times more. Some of the Series B will be spent on research and development to develop new tools.
“Currently CashShield caters to securing against payment and account fraud, but is also working on adding on different fraud screening abilities to secure all vulnerable entries to fraud, including click fraud, IoT authentication, claims fraud and KYT [know your transaction],” founder and chief executive officer Justin Lie told TechCrunch in an email. “As such, we are looking to invest further efforts to build our R&D capabilities to enhance the core technology while scaling more aggressively in the markets we are targeting globally.”
CashShield’s fraud management competitors include Signifyd, Riskified and Forter. Lie said his company differentiates because it combines several approaches, including artificial intelligence and proprietary high frequency trading algorithms and is “fully-machine operated and able to function without the need for human intervention.”
“Other solutions such as Signifyd, Riskified and Forter still need to deploy humans to complete their fraud screening process, but is easy for fraudsters to get ahead of as fraudsters themselves are using machine learning to launch sophisticated coordinated fraud attacks,” he said.
The company’s verticals currently include e-commerce, digital products, telecommunications and online travel, though Lie has said in the past that its tools can also potentially be used to verify social media accounts and fight the proliferation of fake news. Lie explained that CashShield’s current fraud prevention technology detects and prevents the creation of mass accounts and it is also able to detect mass account takeovers of genuine user accounts, which is often used to spread fake news.
“Most recommend relying on two factor authentication to prevent account takeovers, but other than creating friction to user experience, many users are also unwilling to store more personal information (e.g. phone numbers) in the system,” said Lie. “Rather, CashShield uses real-time surveillance to detect if login behavior is of a genuine person or part of a coordinated fraud attack, and is able to block fraudsters from accessing stolen accounts instantly, and prevent them from using the accounts to spread fake news.”
In a press statement, GGV Capital managing partner Jenny Lee said “Justin is a strong leader with a clear vision. The growth CashShield has shown over the past year has boosted our confidence in their potential and the quality of their technology.”
from TechCrunch