Sift Science secures USD 18 mln in Series B funding

Other investors included the company’s earlier backers Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital and Max Levchin. The company previously raised USD 5.5 million in seed and Series A funding, including from the accelerator Y Combinator.

The company has revealed plans to use the new capital to detect and prevent fraud online. According to Chief Executive Jason Tan, Sift Science is already analyzing more than USD 1.5 billion of transactions and 600 million events each month for its customers online. It prevents USD 4 million in fraud monthly.

Sift Science employs machine learning so that its technology becomes smarter at recognizing and blocking would-be cybercriminals the more that its customers use its API.

While its system can identify some fraudulent attempts automatically, the company gives clients a dashboard where they can manage manual reviews and train their system to recognize and reject a certain type of transaction, interaction or user that has proven problematic.