Worldpay has announced that it’s set to acquire Ravelin, an AI-native fraud prevention platform which we invested in back in 2015. The definitive agreement was announced this week, in which Worldpay is said to be adding Ravelin’s technology to its portfolio of solutions to help protect merchants from fraud activity.
Since we invested, the team at Ravelin has worked diligently on creating the technology and product suite to combat fraud for merchant-side businesses. Originally established by co-founders Martin Sweeney, Nick Lally, Leonard Austin and Mairtin O’Riada in 2014, they initially focused on the fraud solution as the first product. They soon expanded the Ravelin platform’s scope to include refund abuse, 3D secure, marketplace fraud and account security. Since we invested in the Seed round, Ravelin raised up to a Series C before this intent to acquire was announced.
Fundraising to acquisition
It’s not unusual to see a company reach this stage of maturity and growth before acquisition, far from it in deep tech. Fintech requires some time to build trust before acquiring and growing a solid customer base, which is ultimately what Ravelin achieved. Charting that rise to success is the funding rounds which helped to provide capital to grow the business. As seen here:
- The seed round which was led by Amadeus in 2015, enabled Ravelin to support existing customers, attract new ones, and expand its machine learning, signals intelligence and partnership capabilities.
- Grew revenue by over 600% by 2016 and added clients such as Deliveroo before raising its Series A.
- Added customers such as JustEat and MyTaxi and raised its Series B by 2018.
- Having helped businesses accept over 1.2 billion transactions and secure over 230 mllion active user accounts since 2018, Ravelin raised its Series C in 2020.
Ravelin CEO, Martin Sweeney, in 2020 for the Series C
That final fundraise also marked some key moments for Ravelin, having used graph networks to block 1.6 million fraudulent accounts which attempted to place 7.4 million orders worth $17Bn. Additionally, the platform used machine learning to block 4 million fraudulent accounts which attempted to place 14.7 million orders worth $53Bn.
Each phase of growth has seen the development of the underpinning technology, product suite and team. Ravelin is now set to be acquired by Worldpay as a result.
A word from the Partner
Since joining Amadeus, Manjari Chandran-Ramesh has been the Partner representing Amadeus on the Ravelin Board. Having worked with the investors and management team at Ravelin throughout the acquisition process, this is what she had to say:
