Bence Jendruszak, COO and Co-Founder of SEON, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he says his platform sees more victims of online fraud during economic downturns, but explains why his company's solution can stop that trend.

Closing Bell

SEON Fights Online Fraud, Raises $94 Million in Series B Round

Cyan is raising fresh funding while also fighting against online fraud. The Europe-based startup announcing its raised 94 million in a series B round at a time when online consumer activity has accelerated CNN claiming it has served over 5000 merchants and reviewed over a billion transactions since the platform was founded back in 2017. And joining me now is Ben See Andrew sec C. 00. And co founder of CNN. Ben C. Thanks so much for coming on the show. What solutions are you providing? We're happy to have you, what solutions are you providing to companies like revolution the fight to eliminate online fraud. Absolutely. Well, so far it seems like the world is losing the war on online fraud. In fact, as of last year, the UK has declared online truck to be a national security threat. So what we're basically doing is we're taking a look at the digital footprint of online consumers whenever they're checking out their registering or logging in at one of the merchants or operators using our platform. We look at things like email address I. P. Address, device, phone number and based on all of this information, we create a risk profile of the users. So we collect all the available information about yourself that we can find on the internet and we tell our merchants and operators whether they can let you check out or register or whether they shouldn't be doing that. So unfortunately we know online security very much in focus right now, it is a very vulnerable time, especially with Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Are there certain fraud types or attempts that you find to be more common? And how specifically does your technology monitor these when, whenever there's economic downturn, we see more victims obviously. Right? So there's money mules camps, so called money mules camps when people try to apply for jobs and in reality their identities are being stolen or even their bank account information. And we've seen that with Covid and again, you know, with people on, on the lines, we see that again, um we we provide a solution that can stop that whenever these bad actors are trying to use your information and your identity and your credit card credentials to check out or register under your name, we can actually filter those out and we can block those accounts and those bad actors from from doing what they were trying to do. So that was I think an important point there, Ben, see that you made that during times of economic downturns. Unfortunately people become more vulnerable, more exposed. Oftentimes to fraud and other cyber Criminal activities that is. Have you seen demand for your own services? Um you've been around since 2017 has demand for your services jumped during the pandemic due to the economic hardship that many have faced. Absolutely. I mean, Look on the one hand I mentioned these money mules comes, but on the other hand, my grandmother was buying her groceries online? You know, she's 80 years old, she doesn't know where she should be submitting her credit card details or whether she shouldn't be submitting it. Um so there's also more people being involved in online commerce and the use of online services than ever before. So if anything Covid has been an accelerant in terms of adapting our system as a fraud prevention tool. Mm hmm. Now you've just raised some money 94 million in a series B round. Congratulations. How are you gonna use that money, Benzie to expand? We're gonna be doubling down on widening our product portfolio making our solution available to an even wider range of customers out there. We're gonna be developing new features uh to to pretty much substantiate that. And on the other hand the U. S. Expansion is going to be a key focus for us over the coming couple of years. So far in the past we haven't had the resources to double down on the US market. So we want to expand our revenue share from that market and scale up our team and obviously global growth as part of our global growth ambitions. Scaling up our team globally is going to be our next milestone. Okay well we wish you the best keep up the good work that's Benzie Andrew Sachs Ceo and co founder of CNNN