Stripe acquires Bouncer to help businesses with fraud prevention

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• Bouncer’s advanced card scanning technology reduces fraud by confirming card authenticity.

• Bouncer will augment Stripe Radar, which prevents hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud for businesses every year.

SAN FRANCISCO—Stripe, a global technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet, announced today it has acquired Bouncer, a company building card authentication technology to reduce fraud during online transactions. Bouncer’s team and technology will join Stripe to further enhance the capabilities of Radar, Stripe’s powerful, machine-learning-based fraud prevention tool.

Bouncer’s card scanning and risk technology is used to help online businesses reduce fraud and authenticate cards. Bouncer will be integrated into Stripe Radar, a fraud prevention tool whose machine learning models are trained on purchases made at millions of companies around the world every day. Radar is fully integrated into Stripe’s payments platform. When it identifies a specific transaction as high risk, Radar will use Bouncer’s card scanning and verification technology to confirm that an end customer has a legitimate card in their hands at the time of the purchase. This extra layer of protection will reduce false positives among potentially high risk transactions.

“Bouncer is a great tool for modern internet businesses. It allows them to quickly identify stolen cards, while also ensuring legitimate customers can transact without being blocked,” said Simon Arscott, business lead for Stripe Radar. “We’re thrilled to welcome the Bouncer team, and their years of experience building payment authentication software for businesses, to Stripe and to enable their technology for Radar users. With the addition of advanced card scanning capabilities, Stripe Radar will be able block more fraud and further increase revenue for millions of businesses around the world who rely on Stripe.”

About Bouncer

When an incoming transaction is flagged as high-risk, rather than blocking the purchase entirely, a business can use Bouncer to verify that a card being used is legitimate. Bouncer does this by requesting live photos of the card. Pictures can be taken on any smartphone, and the scanning technology supports all payment card types, card designs and lighting environments, including low light. Next, Bouncer performs a risk assessment—in less than 400 milliseconds—to validate if the card is real or stolen. All data handling is PCI- and GDPR-compliant. If the card is stolen, the transaction will be rejected; if real, the purchase will be approved and completed. This whole process takes less than one second, providing a seamless experience for legitimate customers while hardening defenses against fraudsters.

“I’m excited that we’ll be able to scale our advanced card-verification technology across the Stripe network to help businesses grow their revenue while further reducing fraud behind the scenes,” said Will Megson, CEO of Bouncer. “The same signals that Radar learns from will make Bouncer more effective, and Bouncer will, in turn, make Radar more effective. We couldn’t be more excited to join the Radar team.”

About Stripe Radar

Stripe Radar is powered by Stripe’s global network, continually learning from transactions across the millions of businesses using Stripe in 195 countries, as well as signals from Stripe’s financial partners. Radar has blocked over a billion dollars in fraudulent transactions since launch for Stripe users like SkipTheDishes, Slice, and TeeSpring, saving them money and eliminating the administrative headaches of disputed transactions. Because its underlying technologies are based on machine learning, Radar benefits from Stripe’s global scale and compounding network effects. For example, Radar blocked 60% more fraud in 2020 than in 2019, saving users hundreds of millions of dollars collectively.

Radar is part of Stripe’s integrated suite of financial products, so even the smallest internet businesses using Stripe for payments can leverage the full power of the Stripe network to combat fraud. Stripe’s global scale means that when a business receives a new payment, there is an 89% chance Radar has seen that credit card before. Starting this month, Radar Analytics Center will give enterprise users more insight into false positive rates, blocked transactions, and dispute trends, making it even easier for businesses to align their fraud strategy to their business model.

For more detail on what Stripe has been building to help internet businesses start and grow, tune into Stripe Sessions, starting June 16. You can register here.