In a round featuring new investors Saints Fund and Eric Benhamou of Benhamou Global Ventures, cross-border transaction monitoring solution provider ThetaRay has raised $31 million in new funding. Led by JVP and BGV Funds, the investment round also featured participation from current investors OurCrowd, Bank Hapoalim, SBT, and others. The funding takes the Israel-based company’s total capital to more than $90 million and will be used to help ThetaRay bring its cloud-based, transaction monitoring solution to new markets.
“We are on the verge of a real revolution in securing the global financial system,” ThetaRay CEO Mark Gazit said. “During this period, when the cross-border payment network has become the lifeblood of the world trade infrastructure, ThetaRay is here to instill certainty and reduce risks in secure, cross-border payments.”
ThetaRay’s announcement comes as the governments of both Nigeria and the Ukraine have implemented ThetaRay’s technology to protect cross-border payments from financial crime. The cross-border payments market, estimated at $25 trillion a year, increasingly has been targeted by financial criminals in the post-COVID environment. Unfortunately, the response to this threat has involved tightened controls and enforcement that have resulted in challenges – from slow service to outright blockages – for many of those businesses and banks that need to make legitimate cross-border payments.
To this end, ThetaRay’s SaaS offering analyzes SWIFT traffic, risk indicators, and data from clients, payers, and payees to spot patterns and anomalies that are indicative of suspicious activity – including money laundering and terrorist financing. The technology leverages a proprietary approach to machine learning called “artificial intuition” which simulates the decision-making aptitude of human instinct and subjectivity. Referred to as the “fourth generation of AI,” artificial intuition is being applied to help financial institutions spot large-scale, more sophisticated cybercrime strategies by analyzing the various parameters of the massive number of individual transactions that may make up a given fraud attempt.
“This revolution will enable many organizations and people around the world to transfer money faster, more securely, and with far fewer fees and stops along the way,” JVP founder and chairman Erel Margalit said. “What Swift did to the banking world 25 years ago, ThetaRay will do to the banking world in the next ten years.”
Founded in 2013 and making its Finovate debut two years later at FinovateFall, ThetaRay launched its cloud-based, anti-money laundering (AML) solution for cross-border payments last month. Also in April, the company appointed former Fundtech/Finastra Payments executive Dagan Osovlansky as its new Chief Product Officer. ThetaRay also won the Transaction Security Innovation Award this spring from the FinTech Breakthrough Awards program.
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