A new partnership between fraud prevention specialist Featurespace and payments provider Elavon will improve the company’s ability to combat fraud in real-time and make the payment experience simpler and safer for consumers. Elavon will deploy Featurespace’s ARIC platform, which leverages behavioral analytics and machine learning to provide a higher degree of fraud protection and risk management.
“Elavon is delighted to work with Featurespace to bring top fraud prevention solutions to market to protect merchants and consumers,” Elavon Merchant Services General Manager and EVP Hannah Fitzsimons said. “We are committed to developing the most innovative fraud and security solutions in the payments industry.”
The combination of Featurespace’s ARIC solution and Elavon’s 3Ds service, which detects fraud incidents to help limit the need for further security checks, will give merchants an “advanced, layered approach” when it comes to fighting fraud. Elavon is bolstering its anti-fraud technology in line with the second Payments Services Directive (PSD2), which mandates strong customer authentication (SCA) and directs processors, merchants, and FIs to do more to combat card-not-present fraud by improving security involving online payments.
Featurespace CEO Martina King said that the partnership would help Elavon “stay one step ahead of criminals at all times” and enable the company to better serve the 1.3 million customers around the world who rely on Elavon “to safeguard their businesses.”
Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Elavon is a global payments provider, processing more than three billion transactions a year. This summer, the company was recognized in The Strawhecker Group’s annual Real Transaction Metrics Awards for its Fusebox solution, which was named “Best Performing Gateway” as well as picking up a first place in the “Fastest Transactions” category and earning a runners-up mention for “Highest Authorization Rate.” Backed by U.S. Bank, and active in 10 countries, Elavon was founded in 1991, and was acquired by Brazil’s Stone Pagamentos in the spring of 2016. Jamie Walker is CEO.
Featurespace demonstrated its ARIC Fraud Manager at FinovateFall 2016. The technology leverages machine learning to identify anomalous behavior in real-time, enabling institutions to stop new fraud attacks as they take place. The solution also measures its own accuracy against the rate of change to ensure that legitimate customer activity is not hindered and the number of false positives is kept at a minimum. The technology, developed out of the University of Cambridge, has been deployed in more than 180 countries.
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Cambridge, U.K., Featurespace was named to the European Business Awards’ Ones to Watch list last month. Also in August, Featurespace announced a partnership with fellow Finovate alum, Emailage, to help the email risk assessment company better fight online application fraud.
Other partnerships from Featurespace announced recently include a pact with processing solution provider Contis in July, and an agreement to provide transaction monitoring for Irish financial services company, Permanent TSB, in June.
Recognized as “Best in Class” by Aite Group in its report on fraud and advanced machine learning platform vendors this spring, Featurespace began the year with news that it was going live in Singapore. “Our financial services customer base is growing fast,” Featurespace’s King said when the launch was announced in February. “We are now working with 17 banks across continental Europe, the U.K., the U.S., and Latin America.”
With more than $72 million in funding, Featurespace includes MissionOG, Insight Partners, Highland Europe, TTV Capital, and Imperial Innovations among its investors.
