Ravelin announces £8M Series B to help secure online commerce from the growing threat of fraud

LONDON SEP 11, 2018: Today we're extremely excited to announce that we've raised £8M in a Series B round led by BlackFin Capital Partners. The funding will allow Ravelin to expand our operations overseas and widen our market reach.

Existing investors including Amadeus Capital Partners, Passion Capital, and Playfair Capital also participated in the round. The funding underpins Ravelin’s expansion plans including a new office in the US. The company has also developed a product for Payment Service Providers. The fraud detection company will continue to invest in capabilities complementary to its core of chargeback protection, notably in account security and risk prediction. Ravelin works directly with online merchants and their payment service providers to reducelosses to fraud and to improve acceptance rates of orders. Ravelin’s choice of machine learning techniques to do this has proven to be both highly effective and extremely cost efficient for its clients - read more about this here. In the last year leading businesses including eShopWorld, Just Eat, Kinguin, and Quiqup have joined its enterprise client portfolio and the company is now helping secure their transactions across 96 countries. The company’s founders have firmly established Ravelin as a major player in the fraud detection landscape over the last four years. Chargebacks, account takeovers, organised fraud rings and terms of service abuse continues to be a multi-billion dollar problem for the online commerce industry. “The growing sophistication and audacity of fraud attacks on businesses is a significant threat to online commerce,” said Martin Sweeney, CEO and Founder of Ravelin. “This funding will allow us to accelerate with new and existing clients a range of options to nullify this threat and help them grow their thriving online businesses securely. There is no greater endorsement of our approach than the companies we’ve been able to add to our portfolio. We’re proud that many of the world’s leading online businesses have chosen to work with us. We’ll continue to serve them well.”Sweeney continued: “We are really happy to welcome BlackFin on board. Their focus on the payments sector provides strong market knowledge and a network that will play an important role as we extend our offerings to PSPs and banks.”“We were impressed not only with what the team at Ravelin have achieved already in terms of products and customer references, but with the size of the opportunity that lies ahead of them,” said Laurent Bouyoux, Founding Partner of BlackFin Capital Partners who led the round. “Using artificial intelligence to solve complex, real-world business problems at scale is in its infancy. Securing e-commerce is incredibly important to the prosperity of developed economies and Ravelin is at the forefront of doing just that,”added Maxime Mandin, Investment Director at BlackFin.

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About BlackFin Capital Partners

BlackFin Capital Partner (www.blackfincp.com) is a sector-focused fund, specializing in FinancialServices across Europe. BlackFin’s investment strategy focuses on asset-light businesses in the financial services & technology sector, across continental Europe. Businesses of interest to BlackFin include asset-management, institutional and retail brokerage, distribution of insurance and banking products, both digital and through traditional channels, payments processing, debt management and collection, fund administration, business process outsourcing and financial technology in a wide sense.

BlackFin operates as an active and influential investor, supporting management teams to take their businesses to the next level. BlackFin manages € 800m through two financial services growth / buyout funds and one FinTech focused venture capital fund. BlackFin Capital Partners is a fully independent firm, run by its four founding partners who have worked together as managers and entrepreneurs in the financial industry for decades. Altogether the team is made up of 25 experienced professionals operating out of offices in Paris, Brussels and Frankfurt.

About Amadeus Capital PartnersAmadeus Capital Partners is a global technology investor. Since 1997, the firm has raised over $1bn for investment and used it to back more than 130 companies. With vast experience and a great network, Amadeus’ team of investors and entrepreneurs share a passion for the transformative power of technology. We invest in consumer services, financial technology, artificial intelligence, cyber security, medical technology, digital healthcare and digital media.Early stage investments we’ve made include genomic research data collaboration platform Repositive, massively parallel simulation platform Improbable; Graphcore, innovators in intelligent microprocessors, and speech recognition company VocalIQ (acquired by Apple). To learn more visit https://amadeuscapital.com and follow us on Twitter @AmadeusCapital.

About Passion Capital

Passion Capital (passioncapital.com, @passioncapital) is one of the premier early stage venture capital funds in Europe. Established in 2011 and based in London, the managing partners Eileen Burbidge, Robert Dighero and Stefan Glaenzer have more than 60 years’ collective experience in entrepreneurial, founding and executive operational roles at tech firms. Passion has invested in more than 70 different founding teams across 5 different European countries to date, including Monzo Bank, Spotahome, GoCardless, Adzuna, Digital Shadows, Nested, Tide, Prowler and of course Ravelin.

About Playfair Capital

Playfair Capital is a European early-stage venture capital fund investing in entrepreneurs who are building technology companies that are re-imagining the way we live, work and play. Established in 2011, based in London and with a strong focus on AI and machine learning, Playfair has backed over 40 companies in 11 different geographies, including Mapillary, Jukedeck, Crypto Facilities, Thought Machine, Numerai and Ravelin.