Israeli Fraud Prevention Firm Riskified Files For Proposed IPO

Israeli startup Riskified, a fraud management platform enabling frictionless eCommerce, has filed for a proposed initial public offering (IPO) of its shares with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). An Israeli unicorn since 2019, Riskified intends to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol “RSKD.”

The company did not disclose the number of shares or what valuation it seeks. Its F-1 filing showed it is looking to raise $100 million on the NYSE.

Founded in 2013 by CEO Eido Gal and CTO Assaf Feldman, Riskified developed an e-commerce fraud prevention platform that makes it easier for online merchants to accept high-risk credit card transactions. The company reviews, approves and guarantees transactions that merchants might otherwise decline. Its solutions also increase bank authorization rates, protect customer accounts from misuse, and allow merchants to offer shoppers alternate payment methods, the firm says.

Riskified works across numerous verticals and its customers include brands like Trip.com, Wish, Prada, TicketMaster and Air Europa, according to the company website. Its revenue for 2020 rose 30 percent from 2019 to $169.7 million, according to its filings.

The company’s platform products include Chargeback Guarantee, a system that automatically approves or denies online orders with performance levels that vary in accordance with merchants’ priorities; Policy Protect, a way to help merchants identify consumers that may be taking advantage of a merchant’s policies in ways that are abusive and/or expensive to the merchant; Deco, a system that helps merchants combat bank authorization failures during the checkout process; and Account Secure, which helps prevent a consumer’s saved account with a merchant from being compromised by a fraudster.

“From the very beginning, we believed that we could build a networked machine learning solution that would outperform anything an individual merchant could build on their own,” the founders wrote in a letter included in the filing. “We’ve spent the last 8 years building a machine learning platform dedicated to minimizing online payment risk. We believe this platform is more accurate and cost-effective than most in-house solutions. It aggregates data from many of the world’s largest online merchants creating network effects that we believe drive superior performance and compelling ROI for our customers.

Riskified has raised over $220 million with investors such as General Atlantic, Fidelity Management & Research, Winslow Capital, Genesis Partners, Pitango, and Qumra Capital.

The company employs over 600 people across its offices in Tel Aviv and its headquarters in New York.