Payfone gets $23m in funding from Synchrony Financial
Digital identity authentication company, Payfone has raised $23 million in a Series F round bringing its total funding to $93.6 million, reports Julie Muhn at Finovate (FinTech Futures‘ sister company).
Payfone will use the financing to expand its user experience by enhancing security services in retail, insurance, and healthcare. The round was led by an institutional investor with participation from Synchrony Financial, MassMutual Ventures, as well as individual investors Anil Aggarwal, Jonathan Weiner, and Andrew Prozes.
Rodger Desai, founder and CEO of Payfone, says: “The days of using quizzes, questions and one-time codes to verify identity are numbered. Payfone is ushering in a new world where authentication is instant, passive and continuous using the most advanced cybersecurity. Our mission is to help clients across the financial, retail, insurance, healthcare, and technology industries use authentication to not only thwart fraud but drive revenue.”
New York-based Payfone, which was founded in 2008 as a mobile payments company, has since pivoted to focus on authentication solutions.
Among Payfone’s product offerings are Instant Authentication for Mobile, a frictionless two-factor authentication solution, and Instant Authentication for Voice, an API that uses the caller’s phone number to authenticate them. The company also offers a Trust Score that provides a measurement of the reliability and risk of each mobile device.
Payfone, whose technologies are currently used by six of the top ten US banks, processes millions of signals per day to authenticate and score transactions; the company currently authenticates ten million transactions per day.
Earlier this year, Payfone partnered with O2, a UK-based mobile network operator, in an effort to protect mobile users from digital fraud. Last spring, the company announced it would power mobile ID authentication for Zelle.
