Amid Brexit uncertainty, not least pertaining to the U.K.’s likely lack of influence on future EU data protection and sharing rules, London-based fraud detection startup Ravelin has closed £3 million in Series A funding.
The round is being led by Playfair Capital, with participation from Amadeus Capital, Passion Capital, Errol Damelin (founder of Wonga) and Paul Foster (founder of Indeed.com), all of whom have backed the company previously.
Launched a little under a year ago, Ravelin lets online businesses plug into its fraud detection technology to help fight consumer fraud and in a way that allows them to strike the right balance between reduced conversion rates and reduced risk. It claims to be able to bring chargebacks — that is, money refunded due to fraud — down to 0.1 per cent of transactions. The startup counts the likes of Deliveroo, EasyTaxi and U.S.-based taxi service Via Taxias as clients.
In a brief call with Ravelin co-founder and CEO Martin Sweeney, he said that the additional capital will be used to grow the team and expand internationally, and that the company was making particular in-roads in South America.
He also said that, post EU referendum, Ravelin plans on “re-establishing” itself in Europe, where it already has a number of clients and is fully compliant with EU data protection rules, and that the company is keeping a close eye on what Brexit will eventually mean.
One thing that is clear, he says, is that any company operating in the online fraud detection space, where being a custodian and processor of consumer data is at the heart of the business, will always need to comply with EU data protection if it wishes to trade with the EU, including housing data in Europe, something that he says has given Ravelin an advantage over non-EU based competitors.
To that end, with the U.K. set to leave the European Union within the next couple of years or so, Sweeney is already bemoaning the country’s inability to influence EU data protection rules moving forward.