Secure payments data platform EFTsure has announced Series A funding of $2 million from Australian venture capital firm, Our Innovation Fund, LP (OIF), founded by Geoff Levy AO, David Shein and Jerry Stesel.
The fast growing fintech is helping enterprises tackle the annual $700 million cost of payment fraud in Australia with recent client wins including ASX200 businesses, councils, schools, SMEs and not-for-profits. The funding injection will be used to scale the business and to address new initiatives such as the rollout of the New Payments Platform (NPP) in October 2017.
Established in 2014 and founded by a team of banking technology and finance professionals Ian Mirels, Mike Kontorovich and Mark Chazan, EFTsure provides a specialised software solution to enterprises, validating the integrity of their payment data and ensuring the name of the payee matches the BSB and account number prior to making a payment.
Why is EFTsure so necessary today?
Ian Mirels said the risk of payment fraud is high in Australia with many finance officers unaware that Australian banks don’t match payee names with account numbers when payments are processed – leaving enterprises vulnerable to fraud and error from internal and external threats.
“Payments fraud is a growing area of cyber crime in Australia, with fast payment methods significantly increasing the risk of fraudulent activity. It’s critical to ensure a focus on both fast and secure payments as the new NPP platform is introduced”, Mr Mirels said.
Our Innovation Fund’s Geoff Levy AO, said, “Payments protection is an essential need world wide. EFTsure is in a pivotal position to capitalise on the growing demand for this need given their deeply experienced team and their established client base. Our Innovation Fund is excited to partner with EFTsure to accelerate their growth. EFTsure are already seeing a large value proposition in what they’re doing to reduce the incidence and opportunity for fraud and error.”
“We understand the average cost of a cybercrime attack to an Australian business is in the order of $276,000. As a current and former director of several ASX companies, having EFTsure’s payment protection in place – especially in the challenging environment of increasing internal and external payment fraud risk – gives me more comfort. EFTsure is a necessary tool in a company’s toolbox in the fight against cybercrime”, Mr Levy said.
What exactly does EFTsure have to offer?
EFTsure’s Know Your Payee (KYP) crowd sourced, cloud based, independently verified database of payee information delivers unprecedented insight into your external payee relationships built on the principle that if the depth and accuracy of your payee data is maintained then your organization is better informed and is capable of protecting itself against fraud, error and non compliance as well as ensuring Best Practice payee relationship management.
EFTsure’s unique cloud-based, ‘crowd-sourced’ supplier database provides real-time matching of payee names to bank account numbers at the point of payment. Additional compliance checks for ABN, GST status and numerous other alerts provide a best practice ‘Know Your Payee’ solution for businesses of all sizes. EFTsure has begun signing up specialist partners to extend and accelerate its market reach.
Mirels continued: “Industry studies show that the average anomaly rate in vendor master files where payee details reside is around 20 per cent, which can lead to payment errors of around one per cent. This is an issue that will have even greater exposure as NPP rolls out and funds are transferred in near real-time.”
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