Big data analytics start-up FeedZai achieves profitability with application focus

Feedzai has announced that it achieved its first year of profitability, a mere 18 months after first product availability. The company focuses on next generation fraud prevention software that protects electronic transactions. It credits its rapid success to its early focus on big data analytics applications, unlike other big data start-ups that sell big data tools and platform technology.

Because Feedzai leverages modern in-memory data processing techniques that are different than older fraud prevention software solutions, its software detects 3 times more fraud at the same level of false positives. This means that Feedzai customers spend 4.5 times less on labour costs to review false positives, a key efficiency metric for fraud and risk departments. Furthermore,  in contrast to the traditional approach of updating analytic models every 6 months, Feedzai’s unique machine learning technology – combined with its subsecond analytics engine – allows companies to block new fraud efforts on the first attempt.

Feedzai, headquartered in Coimbra, Portugal, launched Feedzai North America in Redwood City, California, as a wholly owned business to spearhead Feedzai’s expansion into North America. Nuno Sebastiao, CEO of Feedzai, has relocated from Portugal to the United States to build his US team with new hires across all functions of the business. Feedzai also added two new US investors, SAP Ventures and Data Collective, as part of a USD2.4m investment. These funds add to an initial May 2011 investment round of USD1.9m from leading European investors,

“Feedzai’s founders and development team are world class,” stated Matt Ocko, Managing General Partner at Data Collective. “With years of cutting edge research at the European Space Agency and other top European research institutions, they built a massive-scale risk analytics platform second to none. Because of this platform, their fraud prevention applications execute large scale, sub-second analytics that outperform today’s industry leaders by a wide margin.”

“Feedzai offers unique, proven fraud prevention capabilities to US financial institutions that want to protect new electronic payment scenarios, for example mobile payments,” stated Nuno Sebastiao, CEO of Feedzai. “And since fraud suppression is so key to the mobile payments market, Feedzai is well-positioned to grow with our customers capitalizing on this trend.”