18 June 2020
Investment will accelerate privacy-first customer identity platform with strategic acquisitions
New York NY, June 18, 2020: Payfone announced it has raised $100 million to acquire strategic assets, further strengthen its machine learning capabilities, and build a cross-industry consortium to secure digital transactions and experiences. The investment was led by funds advised by Apax Digital, the growth equity team of Apax Partners.
Payfone is setting a new standard for digital identity verification and authentication. Its customer identity platform enables the world’s largest financial institutions, healthcare organizations and technology companies to bring speed and security to their onboarding, digital servicing and call center processes.
Payfone’s authentication solutions, including its unique Trust Score™ tool, are built on ten years of proprietary phone intelligence that enable Payfone to anonymously measure a phone number’s reputation and risk with real-time processing of behavioral signals. Payfone’s platform instantly detects burner phones, spoofed calls, real-time SIM swap fraud, and synthetic identities, while removing friction from legitimate transactions. Payfone also provides call verification solutions that run passively in the background of a phone call, allowing faster issue resolution.
Rodger Desai, CEO of Payfone, said, “The mobile phone is rapidly becoming the secure passport for navigating our digital lives. With one in three US consumers already authenticated by Payfone, this investment accelerates our ability to set the standard for the authentication process. As we build out a cross-industry consortium, more enterprises will be able to access Payfone’s real-time fraud and risk signals to prevent account takeovers while passing more transactions.”
Daniel O’Keefe, Managing Partner of Apax Digital said, “Identity is the key enabling technology for the next generation of digital businesses. Payfone’s Trust Score™ is core to the real-time decisioning that enterprises need in order to drive revenue while thwarting fraud and protecting privacy.”
Zach Fuchs, Principal of Apax Digital added, “Payfone’s technology enables frictionless customer experience, while curbing the mounting operating expense caused by manual review.” Concurrent with the investment, Mr. O’Keefe and Mr. Fuchs will join Payfone’s board of directors.
Joining the investment round are new investors Sandbox Insurtech Ventures and Ralph de la Vega, the former Vice Chairman of AT&T. Existing investors MassMutual Ventures, Synchrony, Blue Venture Fund, Wellington Management LLP, and former CEO of LexisNexis Andrew Prozes also participated.
For more information about Payfone’s suite of identity verification and authentication solutions, visit payfone.com.
About Payfone
Payfone is a rapidly growing software and data analytics company based in New York. Payfone’s customer identity platform secures the digital experiences of the banking, insurance, telecommunication, retail, and healthcare industries. Its patented Trust Score™ enables enterprises to pass more digital transactions while thwarting fraud attacks. For the latest updates follow us at https://www.linkedin.com/company/payfone.
About Apax Digital
The Apax Digital Fund specializes in growth equity and buyout investments in high-growth enterprise software, consumer internet, and technology-enabled services companies worldwide. The Apax Digital team leverages Apax Partners’ deep tech investing expertise, global platform, and specialized operating experts, to enable technology companies and their management teams to accelerate the achievement of their full potential. Over its more than 40-year history, Apax Partners has raised and advised funds with aggregate commitments of over $50 billion. These funds provide long-term equity financing to build and strengthen world-class companies. For more information see: www.apax.com.
Media Contacts:
For Payfone
Emily Riley | +1 914-330-1128 | pr@payfone.com
For Apax Digital
USA Media: Todd Fogarty, Kekst CNC | +1 212-521-4854 | todd.fogarty@kekstcnc.com
UK Media: Matthew Goodman / James Madsen, Greenbrook | +44 20 7952 2000 | apax@greenbrookpr.com
