Inscribe raises $25 million in Series B to combat fraud

We live in a fast-paced digital world where buyers and consumers have come to enjoy and expect frictionless interactions with the companies they buy from. As businesses move online, it is becoming increasingly difficult to know the exact identity of who you are doing business with, making companies uncertain about which potential customers are trustworthy.

The PYMNTS study found that the average U.S. financial institution loses $51 million annually to fraud, and many lose even more, according to the new research conducted by PYMNTS in collaboration with Ingo Money. To address the issue of trust and fraud, governments introduced KYC or Know Your Customer, a set of standards used in the investment and financial services industry to verify customers and know their risk and financial profiles.

Many businesses are struggling to keep up with the KYC rules over the years, which has weighed heavily on companies. It is for this reason that Inscribe is on a mission to automate document fraud detection and fight financial fraud with AI.

Inscribe quickly detects fraudulent documents sent to insurers and lenders, like proof of address documents and bank statements, using a combination of forensics and machine learning. The five-year-old startup uses a combination of natural language processing and computer vision to scan documents sent to insurance companies and lenders to catch fraudulent activity in documents such as pay stubs, tax forms, and other documents.

In order to meet its hiring goals, Inscribe has raised $25 million in Series B funding to expand the breadth of our fraud detection capabilities, as well as introduce state-of-the-art Risk Intelligence innovations, Inscribe said in a blog post.

The round was led by Threshold Ventures and joined by existing investors Crosslink Capital, Foundry and Uncork Capital, as well as angel investors like Box co-founder Dylan Smith and Intercom co-founder Des Traynor, bringing the company's amount raised to $38 M.

Inscribe will use the new capital infusion to grow its Dublin and US offices and expand deeper into the financial services sector.

In 2017, Inscribe was founded by co-founders Conor and Ronan Burke. In December 2018, the company opened a Dublin, Ireland office after raising $3 million in funding.

Inscribe, which works with financial institutions, including BlueVine, Credito Real and Amount, has had 12 x growth year over year, as it has been used to identify fraud within high-trust online applications such as lending and account openings.

Ronan Burke, co-founder and CEO of Inscribe, said that the pandemic-driven shift towards applications and approvals moving from in-person to online only was a perfect storm for fraud. Inscribe helps financial institutions fight this increase in fraud and save millions of dollars by detecting false identities, inflated revenues, and inaccurate company information. Ido Lustig, Chief Risk Officer at BlueVine, said that the BlueVine has taken action to provide fast Paycheck Protection Program PPP loans to small businesses that have been hit the hardest.