San Francisco, July 26, 2023 – Effectiv, a real-time fraud and risk management platform for financial institutions and fintech companies, announced today it has raised an additional $4.5 `million in seed funding, bringing its total raise to more than $9 million. The investment will be used to accelerate Effectiv’s growth in helping organizations fight financial fraud, a problem that has worsened since the pandemic. The funding round was led by Better Tomorrow Ventures and participation from Accel and angel investors.
The platform, which provides AI-driven solutions such as payment fraud detection, customer and business onboarding verification, and compliance management, has experienced rapid growth since launching in 2022. The company has helped organizations process more than $27 billion in financial products and is currently processing more than $100 million daily. Ravi Sandepudi, the CEO and co-founder of Effectiv, attributes the company’s success to its technology, the team, and its growing customer base, which includes BHG Money, Cardless, Pomelo, USALLIANCE Financial, Peapack-Gladstone Bank, and more. The company has also seen strong revenue growth, crossing $1 million a year after launching.
“We are incredibly grateful that our product has resonated with our partners, especially when fraud is at an all-time high. We also recognize that the financial world is rapidly digitizing, changing how consumers and organizations interact. At the same time, advanced generative AI technologies are attacking organizations at a scale we have never seen. For example, fraudsters are using a technology called deepfakes to clone an individual’s voice, alter someone’s image or video to access financial accounts, create banking accounts, process wire transfers, and more. It’s a critical problem, and one that our team is committed to fighting,” said Ravi Sandepudi, CEO and co-founder of Effectiv.
In the past year, Effectiv has seen a rise in fraud with real-time payments. As banks get ready to adopt FedNow, an instant payment service launched by the Federal Reserve, the company is preparing to release DeviceIntel, a new device biometrics technology. The feature, which analyzes and flags suspicious user behavior on a device, is expected to further improve Effectiv’s payment fraud solutions.
“Stopping payment fraud and helping organizations with FedNow, are a special focus for Effectiv and an area where our AI and platform truly shine. After months of research and product development, we are very excited to launch DeviceIntel, which will improve our solutions even more. Effectiv’s ability to look at all end-user interactions holistically helps us identify fraudulent transactions with very high accuracy in real-time. While mechanisms such as one-time passwords or voice authentication were functional in the past, we are repeatedly seeing that they are easily compromised and no longer sufficient. For instance, a customer’s voice can now be forged in a few seconds with off-the-shelf AI. Therefore, taking a holistic evaluation approach is necessary,” said Ritesh Arora, COO and co-founder of Effectiv.
Better Tomorrow Ventures, who led this funding round, couldn’t agree more with Effecitv’s expansion of new solutions and long-term vision in helping organizations prevent fraud.
“Effectiv has done an incredible job proving the cutting-edge technology they are building can withstand one of the biggest challenges we face today in the financial industry. They are experts not only in the fraud space but also in machine learning and AI. This combination makes them the most formidable team in the industry to tackle this problem,” said Sheel Mohnot, co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures.
Dinesh Katiyar, who led the investment for Accel, believes Effectiv’s team and technology capabilities are what truly make them stand out and why they decided to partner with the company.
“Ravi and the team have been helping companies detect and prevent fraud for decades. With Effectiv, they have figured out how to do this from nearly all angles in a truly scalable, adaptable, and economical way. They understand how AI can be used to fight fraud in this age of AI-assisted bad actors. We’re excited to be part of Effectiv’s journey,” said Dinesh Katiyar, Partner at Accel. The firm led Effectiv’s pre-seed round in 2021 and was joined by REV Venture Partners, BHG VC, and angel investors.
About Effectiv
Effectiv is a real-time fraud and risk management platform with AI solutions for financial institutions and fintech companies. Behind the company are several team members who helped build Simility, a fraud detection software company that was acquired by PayPal in 2018. The company was founded by Anupam Tarsauliya, Jonathan Doering, Ravi Sandepudi, and Ritesh Arora, who all met at Simility. Prior to Simility and PayPal, the founding team members were experts in fighting fraud and building machine-learning products for companies such as Google and Walmart. The company is based in San Francisco, California.
