Worldpay rival Adyen expands anti-fraud services for customers

Friday, 23 October 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Reuters: Dutch payments processing company Adyen, one of Europe’s biggest start-ups, is launching a service to make it easier for customers, which include Spotify, to identify fraud as it seeks new ways to compete with larger rival Worldpay.

Adyen, which last month secured new financing from a fund that acts for wealthy tech investors including Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, on Tuesday introduced the system for merchants to cut fraud by rating shoppers based on the breadth of their retail activity, not just the merchant’s own site.

The new risk management system, called RevenueProtect, uses transaction data, behavioural analytics and statistical modelling to create profiles on shoppers based on the devices they use, their regional location and other consumer behaviour.

The system, the first to be offered as part of a unified payments processing service, would replace fraud-detection services offered by third-party risk management specialists that rely on data merchants glean mainly from their own customers.

Adyen, created nearly a decade ago by the founders of Britain’s Worldpay, said it is valued at around 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) after the new investment from Iconic, the Silicon Valley billionaires’ fund.

Worldpay listed in London a week ago in a stock market flotation valuing the company at 4.8 billion pounds ($7.4 billion).

Adyen processes around 30 billion euros ($34 billion) in payments for online and physical store merchants per year. Among its roughly 4,000 customers are big online sites including Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, Booking.com and Netflix.

Worldpay, whose customers include British Airways and Sony as well as thousands of small businesses ranging from pubs to hairdressers, process far greater payment volumes of around 370 billion pounds of transactions per year.

This summer, Chief Executive Pieter van der Does said Adyen was working to become a full-service payments provider for retailers and online merchants and was prepared to wait up to two or three years before seeking a stock market listing.

In June, van der Does said he expected to double revenue this year to around $300 million, up from $140 million in 2014. At the time, he said Adyen was flush with funds and had no need of new financing. The company has been profitable since 2011.

Late last year, Adyen raised $250 million from investors including Index Ventures, General Atlantic and Temasek Holdings, then valuing the company at 1.2 billion euros.