How Bureau Fights The World’s Fraudsters One Identity At A Time

Who will staunch the flood of fraud that is engulfing the world? Nasdaq’s latest research suggests losses from financial crime have now reached a staggering $485 billion a year, as fraudsters cash in on digital connectivity and harness new technologies to target their victims.

One company promising to take a stand against these fraudsters is Bureau. The California-based start-up, which is today announcing the successful completion of a £30 million Series B financing round, says its risk intelligence platform can help enterprises and other organisations to combat sophisticated fraud attacks.

Forbes first profiled Bureau in July 2023, revealing news of its $16.5 million Series A round. Since then, the company’s customer numbers and revenues have both tripled, says Ranjan Reddy, founder and CEO. It has verified more than 600 million identities on behalf of more than 150 customers, he adds.

“The world faces a massive problem because the cost of acquiring identities for fraud just keeps on coming down,” says Reddy. In some countries, all the details you need to clone someone’s identity for fraud purposes can be bought online for a couple of dollars, he warns. “I believe that in the near future, consumers will demand trust they can bank, which requires businesses to invest in cutting-edge risk infrastructure that detects and prevents compliance, fraud and security risks in real time.”

Enter Bureau’s platform, which focuses on snuffing out identity frauds before they take hold. Bureau’s approach is to start with the digital persona of a customer – that could be anything from a mobile telephone number or email address that one of its clients receives from a customer; then it tries to map that persona to a real person, to check that the customer actually exists; finally, the platform analyses the behavioural data attached to that identity and person, to assess whether the identity request made to its client should be investigated.

The goal is to help organisations verify the identities of new and returning customers quickly and safely. Bogus customers can be turned away while new ones can get on with trading without unnecessary checks being put in their way.

It’s a solution that requires the integration of a number of different tools and technologies, including analytics and other artificial intelligence-powered solutions. The goal is to provide a single platform through which enterprises can confront challenges such as money mule detection, account takeover prevention, fraud ring risk and onboarding compliance. The results of each identity verification then feeds automatically into the enterprise’s workflows.

Bureau’s clients come from across a range of industries, but banking, lending, gaming and e-commerce businesses form a large part of the customer base. Its technology enables gaming businesses to detect collusion, for example, and supports fintechs and other credit providers when lending to customers for the first time.

“Traditionally, compliance, fraud, security and credit risks have been siloed in companies and served by multiple-point solutions in each domain,” Reddy explains. “With digital-first and increasingly digital-only customer journeys, these risks are hyphenated, and demand continuous monitoring of customer identities and transactions; we can solve that with one platform.”

The company’s rapid growth since its Series A round underlines customer appetite for such solutions. Bureau hopes its additional fundraising will help it to double down on its technology capabilities, particularly in the sectors where client numbers are growing most quickly, as well as supporting an increase in its go-to-market activity. The business currently employs 85 staff, but Reddy expects that number to hit 120 by the end of 2025.

Today’s Series B round is led by Sorenson Capital, a well-known investor in the identity space, with participation from PayPal Ventures. It also features further commitments from existing investors Commerce Ventures, GMO Venture Partners, Village Global, Quona Capital and XYZ Ventures.

Rob Rueckert, a partner at Sorenson Capital, says the company is well-placed to continue growing quickly. “Bureau utilises a unique combination of device, behaviour, financial and partner data to quickly block scammers without creating deal-breaking headaches for users,” he says. “By preventing fraud while avoiding any harm to customer retention, revenue and growth, Bureau is truly differentiated in the vast and significant fraud-prevention space.”