- Forter — a leader in e-commerce fraud prevention — announced recently it has raised $300 million in Series F funding at a $3 billion valuation. These are the details.
Forter — a leader in e-commerce fraud prevention — announced recently it has raised $300 million in Series F funding led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from Third Point Ventures and Adage Capital Management. And existing investors also participated including Bessemer Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, March Capital, NewView Capital, Salesforce Ventures, and Scale Venture Partners.
This announcement comes six months after the company completed its $125 million Series E round, almost tripling the valuation to $3 billion, and makes Forter the most valuable privately held company ever in the fraud prevention industry.
Forter plans to use the additional funding to continue expanding its global ecosystem of trust, enabling retailers, e-commerce platforms, issuing banks, and payment providers to fight fraud together, boosting confidence and improving shopper experience across the entire purchasing journey. Over the last 12 months, Forter has:
— Doubled the size of its global network of merchants to exceed $250 billion in annual online transactions while protecting more than a billion shoppers globally;
—Grown revenue by over 100%;
— Added leading global brands as customers including Farfetch, ASOS, SHEIN and Prime Trust.
As part of the company’s continued expansion, Forter more than tripled the number of employees within the APAC region and continues to grow its presence in Australia.
As Forter has benefited tremendously from the industry trend towards digital transformation that resulted from pandemic effects, the company’s unprecedented growth has also been driven by product innovation and new partnerships with leaders across banking, payments and e-commerce.
And earlier this year, Forter partnered with Capital One to launch Trusted Authorization, one of the first solutions enabling merchants to increase authorization rates and decrease false declines by sharing Forter’s fraud insights with issuing banks to make more informed decisions. And Forter also launched its Fraud Prevention Platform for Payment Service Providers (PSPs), announcing deals with FreedomPay, Nuvei, and most recently Flutterwave to increase approval rates and offer the best fraud prevention to more than a million merchants globally.
KEY QUOTES:
“We have set a new standard for trust in commerce. Forter’s platform brings together merchants, banks and payment providers to dramatically improve authorization rates, eliminate false declines and allow consumers to shop with greater convenience and enjoy a more personalized, secure experience. This transforms fraud prevention into a growth and revenue enablement engine for the entire consortium of participating merchants, ensuring our customers can attract, convert and retain the best shoppers. The funding will enable us to accelerate our growth trajectory by investing in talent, technology and continued global expansion.”
— Michael Reitblat, CEO and co-founder, Forter
“Forter allows us to solve real business challenges and take advantage of explosive growth in online activity. The company’s automated, real-time solution has significantly increased approval rates with chargebacks dropping to nearly zero, allowing us to attract and retain the best customers across all retail channels, without the fear of fraud.”
— Rick Wittman, Head of Information Security, Catch Group, a subsidiary of Australian conglomerate Westfarmers
“With the unprecedented rate of digital transformation and the fierce competition in creating the slickest user experience, superior fraud prevention plays an ever more critical role in e-commerce revenue growth. After we talked with dozens of customers of every relevant solution in this space, it was very clear to us that Forter is the leader in performance and scale.”
— John Curtius, Partner at Tiger Global Management
“As a longtime investor, it’s been incredible to see Forter’s ascent. It’s a testament to the leadership team’s vision and execution in allowing merchants to provide the seamless experiences customers expect and to be able to accept as many transactions as possible, while still accurately identifying and blocking fraud.”
— Ravi Viswanathan, NewView Capital
