Israeli predictive AI fraud protection startup nSure.ai raises $18M

Israeli predictive artificial intelligence fraud protection startup nSure.ai Ltd. announced today it has raised $18 million in new funding to allow the company to extend anti-fraud, chargeback-free guarantees and meet growing demand for its services.

MoreTech Ventures led the Series A round, with DisruptiveAI, Gryffin Ventures and Moneta Seeds also participating. NSure.ai has raised $25.4 million to date, including a round of $6.8 million in June.

Founded in 2019, nSure.ai uses advanced AI technology to provide merchants insurance-backed fraud detection for digital goods sales. The service is developed to cater to high-risk digital good sellers such as electronic gift cards, airline tickets, concerts, sports tickets, money transfer apps, hotel vouchers, software and games. These online sales areas traditionally suffer from high rejection rates, losing sales and good customers.

NSure.ai’s AI-driven Fraud Prevention Intelligence system continuously evolves along with the threat landscape to guarantee that all legitimate transactions are approved and that about 2% of fraudulent charges are kept out.

Timing is everything and nSure.ai certainly came around at a time of rapid change in online sales. Although online gift cards and airline ticket sales are nothing new, the market has since seen a rise in financial technology products, cryptocurrency sales, nonfungible tokens and other virtual good sales. These newer areas have the same issues as more longstanding online sales, with fraudsters taking advantage of outdated fraud prevention systems that weren’t developed to manage them.

The company claims that online retailers sacrifice up to 30% of sales to fraud, making them responsible for lost goods, regardless of their costly security tools. The company says its offering has already proved itself in the prepaid and gaming sectors, and it’s actively securing other sectors, offering guaranteed chargeback protection to all clients.

The company has seen strong growth with a 500% increase in revenue in slightly over a year, though it didn’t provide absolute numbers. Notable customers include AXA S.A., Coda Payments Pte. Ltd., Kamet Ventures, Skytours-Online Inc., PayBis Ltd. and eTopupOnline.com LLC.

“Fintech companies powering wallets and crypto-based services offer an immediate transfer of funds, creating a huge incentive for sophisticated fraudsters and scalable fraud patterns,” Alex Zeltcer, co-founder and chief executive officer of nSure.ai, said in a statement. “Standard, e-commerce based fraud prevention platforms are ill-equipped to deal with this new market. Merchant-specific AI models, along with real-time anomaly detection, such as the ones we offer, help these new generation companies on their growth without taking excessive risk.”