SEON, the fraud fighter, has secured €10 million (USD 12 million) series A investment. The funding, Hungary’s largest series A round to date, was led by leading European early-stage investor Creandum, behind some of Europe’s best tech companies including Spotify, Klarna, and Kahoot, as well as further investment from CEE’s leading VC, PortfoLion, part of OTP Bank. 

As part of the funding round, SEON has added the following industry leaders to its table of current shareholders: N26 founders, Maximilian Tayenthal and Valentin Stalf, SumUp founders Stefan Jeschonnek and Jan Deepen, Tide CEO Laurence Krieger, Revolut ex-CFO Peter O'Higgins, iZettle ex-chief Product Officer Leo Nilsson, Onfido cofounder Eamon Jubawy and ComplyAdvantage founder Charlie Delingpole.

SEON is a fraud-detection solution that draws on data from across the internet to establish customers’ digital footprints to wean out false accounts and prevent fraudulent transactions from taking place. It already supports companies from a wide range of industries, including Patreon, AirFrance, Rivalry, Ladbrokes by having its technology operate in real time, with no stale data and zero false positives, a paradigm shift from previous proprietary databases to true real time fraud prevention.

According to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), fraud is now a national security threat and ever-growing concern, especially with the recent surge in ecommerce. Reports suggest that e-retail sales account for 14.1% of all retail sales worldwide with forecasts suggesting sustained growth to 22% by 2023. With digital fraud currently taking many forms and impacting a wide range of industries, ecommerce transaction fraud losses reached $25.5 billion in 2019 and are due to reach $50.5 billion in 2024. Therefore, SEON’s technology is needed more than ever in the global fight against fraud.

Today, SEON is often described by its customers as the “Stripe of fraud prevention” and follows a developer and fraud manager led focus. It sees end users having more of an influence when selecting the best tools to help them in their role. Ultimately the vision for SEON is to democratise fraud prevention, ensuring every business is safe online.

Having launched in the second half of 2017, SEON has been consistently profitable since the end of 2019. It experienced rapid growth in 2020, accelerated by the COVID-19 paradigm shift. It is part of the top 80% of tech companies that are not just COVID-proof, but whose operations have been boosted by the pandemic. This is due to operating in some key fast-growing verticals such as neobanks, esports, iGaming, Forex and crypto trading. The investment will support SEON’s continued growth, by adding to their highly skilled teams located in Budapest and London, as well as further global expansion.

SEON’s CEO and Founder, Tamas Kadar, commented: “We’re extremely pleased to have completed our latest funding round, led by Creandum, joining its exciting tech portfolio. We feel we have found a like-minded investor to work closely with to pursue the significant global opportunity for our business as we continue to democratise fraud fighting.”

Bence Jendruszak, COO and Co-Founder at SEON, added: “For all our achievements in such a short time span we feel like we are still only getting started. We are still seen as the new kids on the block in a crowded market, but with this latest round of funding we can add more leading talent to our team to further grow our product led growth and eradicate online fraud.” 

Simon Schmincke, General Partner at Creandum, said: "At Creandum, we believe cybercrime will be one of the most serious threats of the 21st century. With SEON, we’ve found an anti-fraud solution that’s effective, affordable, flexible, intuitive, and clearly proves its ROI. We are super excited to be part of SEON's journey to capture the hyper-growth, anti-fraud market!"

Gábor Pozsonyi, Partner at PortfoLion Capital Partners, added: "Seon is a fundamentally useful brand: it offers a solution to one of the greatest challenges of digitalization, not only saving hundreds of millions of euros for its partners but making the internet a safer place. Their product is changing the world, and it's a pleasure to be part of their journey."