Precognitive, a cloud-based fraud prevention startup that tracks potential fraud before it happens, has raised a $1.25 million seed round.
The startup, founded in January 2016, has built three core technologies that they view as the "pillars of modern fraud prevention," founder Sam Bouso told Chicago Inno over email.
Their technology analyzes multiple parts of a user's interaction with an online service to identify suspicious behavior before fraud happens. Through a device intelligence and tracking solution, a behavioral analytics solution, and a decision engine, their tech assesses devices and connections for risk when they connect to a website or mobile app, analyzes behavior and biometric signals that could indicate unusual user behavior and provides an "allow" or "reject" for events that pose a risk, such as login or purchase.
Bouso said Precognitive's extensive data aggregation and flexible solutions (which means they're never reliant on just one product) is what sets their solution apart.
"We believe there is a lot of valuable data not being leveraged in preventing fraud," said Bouso. "Most solutions focus on moment a transaction happens. We are actually able to monitor device and user activity over multiple visits to build the full story behind every event [and] transaction before it happens."
"Ultimately, we aim to be a sort of [Amazon Web Services] for fraud prevention, capable of solving any fraud or authentication problem by providing our clients with a rich set of modules that can be assembled to solve the challenge at hand," he added.
Bouso declined to share exact user numbers but noted the tech has been recognized by several global banks and is deployed in North American, Latin America and Europe. They work with bank, payment service providers, large e-commerce retailers as well as the travel and entertainment industry. Precognitive has been approached to determine if foreign ATM transactions are legitimate as they're happening, a problem Bouso said "only very niche providers have been able to provide."
Ultimately, we aim to be a sort of Amazon Web Services for fraud prevention
The seed round was led by Chicago's Corazon Capital, with participation from Boston's Flybridge Capital Partners, Hyde Park Ventures and Jeff Liesendahl, the cofounder and CEO of Accertify. Precognitive will use the new funds to hire for engineering and business roles.
Corazon Capital principal Phil Schwarz said Bouso's experience, which includes over a decade of work in engineering, adtech and fraud-prevention, and Precognitive's comprehensive solution, were what drew Corazon to the deal.
"Fraudsters are continually innovating and are increasingly sophisticated, so solutions have to be continually modernized to be one step ahead," he said over email. "We believe Precognitive is a comprehensive, modern solution in a big market with a high-quality founder at the helm."
