Evina raises 20 million euros to secure financial services for telecom operators

 

Paris, November 18, 2021 – Paris-based cybersecurity company Evina, which operates in 70 countries, has announced a €20 million funding round to consolidate its leading position in securing financial services for telecom operators.

The future of telecom operators will not be determined by the sales strategy of cell phone plans, but by the ability to provide new services to the huge customer bases they have patiently built up. Among these, financial services are the most crucial.

The financial services offered by telecom operators today not only offer the possibility to buy digital content, mobile applications or subscriptions to major streaming platforms directly via their SIM card, but also to receive, withdraw and transfer money. The aim is both to offer a highly efficient one-click payment method with conversion rates 100 times higher than those of a bank card, and to replace and compensate for the absence of basic banking services. Especially at a time when there are more smartphones than people on earth, and 2 billion people do not have a bank account.

Today, nearly 20% of global digital content purchases go through operators. By 2021, this will be worth more than $40 billion, with double-digit annual growth. In addition, more than $2.5 trillion is flowing through operators’ e-wallets. This amount is expected to double within 5 years.

The financial services offered by operators are so successful that they have inevitably attracted organized crime from around the world. “All the criminal organizations in the world are converging on cybercrime,” warns Guillaume Poupard, the Director General of the French National Agency for Information Systems Security.

It is to face this challenge that Evina was founded in 2018 by a team of hackers, cybersecurity researchers and financial services specialists who have worked for more than 15 years in the sector they protect.

More than $1 billion saved in the last 12 months by Evina for ecosystem players

David Lotfi, CEO and founder of Evina explains how it all started: “We realized that no one knew how to stop this new generation of cybercriminals, who are extremely professional and have much more advanced technical and financial resources than before. We saw this as a major threat and decided to develop a dedicated solution. Very quickly, the largest operators around the world asked to implement our solutions.”

Evina is now present in over 70 countries. It protects the world’s largest telecom groups such as Orange and Vodacom, but also major digital merchants for whom control of operator payment is a strategic advantage. With a detection rate of 99.94% of false transactions and a false positive rate of less than 0.06%, Evina has prevented the theft of more than 1 billion euros over the last 12 months.

In recognition of its solution, Evina has received all the industry’s leading awards over the past two years, including the Global Carrier Billing Summit award for the best anti-fraud solution in 2020 and 2021 and the Juniper Award for the best financial transaction security solution in 2021.

Confidence in Evina and in the industry’s potential from US funds and historical investors

The €20 million fundraising will allow Evina to accelerate its commercial presence outside Europe, with the opening of offices abroad, and to strengthen its technical team with new talent, in order to consolidate its position as a leader in the world of financial services for telecom operators.

The round was led by New York-based Radian Capital with the support of Evina’s historical investors including 50 partners, Saas Partners and Id4VC.

“Telecom Operators are in a very strong position to offer the next generation of financial service products. And while they currently possess much of what they need – embedded customer base, access to phones, known identities, financial performance, and bank account credentials – these operators still lack the security capabilities necessary to fight the most sophisticated fraud attempts. This is why we are so excited to back the team at Evina. They bring ‘bank security’ capabilities to these Telcos that allows them to operate in 2021 and beyond.” enthused Jordan Bettman, founder of Radian Capital.

Learn more about Evina at: https://www.evina.com/

Vodacom and Evina unite to fight mobile fraud

Vodacom, SA’s leading network has taken a major step forward in mobile user safety by partnering with cybersecurity for mobile payments company, Evina.

Mobile users in Africa’s most advanced economy will now join the ranks of the tens of millions of consumers globally that are protected daily by Evina’s payments technology.

In recent years, the South African mobile industry has attracted a large number of fraudsters leading to a substantial increase in user complaint rates. These frequent fraudulent attacks are due to the fact that a large number of the African population uses a cellular phone, especially as a mobile payment method. Fraudsters are never far from where mobile transactions are. In South Africa alone, the country fraud rate recorded by Evina’s fraud sensors was 23.53% with clickjacking being the most fraudulent technique used to defraud mobile users in the first quarter of 2021. This region is a playground for new and extremely sophisticated fraud techniques that are difficult to spot unless using advanced technology

In this context, Vodacom has partnered with Evina to secure mobile transactions via Evina’s set of anti-fraud solutions that include DCBprotect and Eyewitness. DCBprotect detects bots that attempt to make fraudulent transactions whereas Eyewitness records fraudulent behaviour on payment pages to give proof to Vodacom’s partners of any bot-related activity.

Evina offers the most advanced cybersecurity technology for mobile payments and currently blocks over 16 million transactions in more than 70 countries worldwide. Evina is a recognized player in the mobile ecosystem and has been awarded various prestigious accolades such as the Best Financial Clearing Solution from Juniper Research and Best Carrier Billing Fraud Solution at the Global Carrier Billing Summit 2020.

David Lotfi, CEO & Founder of Evina: “We strive to work with mobile players that share our vision of fraud being a serious issue that needs to be dealt with – and soon. By integrating our anti-fraud solution into its operations, Vodacom with its large African network of mobile users, has confirmed that it too shares our values and wishes to create a fraud-free mobile payment ecosystem. This makes deploying the best technology worldwide, for the protection of South African mobile users, effortless.”

“The protection of our customers against all forms of fraudulent activity is our top priority. We are constantly striving to eradicate any potential mobile fraud on our network by updating and enhancing our controls to give customers peace of mind whilst enjoying seamless connectivity through their mobile phones. Introducing DCBprotect as solution is testament to our efforts to stay ahead of fraudsters and create a fraud free digital environment. We believe that early detection and blocking of any form of criminality on our network is in the interest of our customers and ultimately the Vodacom brand” said Mariam Cassim Chief Officer of Vodacom Financial and Digital Services.

Joanna Cox is speaking at the Global Carrier Billing Summit

Carrier Billing Summit Panel with aimm members 6th October

The Global Carrier Billing Summit begins tomorrow and aimm will feature prominently through the afternoon (6th October).

Joanna Cox our General Manager will be conducting an interview with Ana-Rosa Broster from Telefonica discussing ‘Building and balancing consumer confidence with the ease of doing business‘, she then takes part in a lively panel discussion with our Vice Chair Rob Weisz from Fonix, Joel Stern from Global and Peter Garside from EE, discussing how industry can lower the barrier for entry for new merchants.

Then don’t forget to tune in for the Carrier Billing Awards at the end of the afternoon where the winners from across the awards categories will be announced.

aimm members can claim their 10% discount off their passes by using our Media Partnership discount code: AIMM10

 

Award Nominations close today!

The Global Direct Carrier Billing Awards, taking place on 6 October during Global Carrier Billing Summit, will celebrate the past year’s most impressive industry achievements and developments as well as the innovative individuals driving Carrier Billing success!

Entering and winning a prestigious Global Carrier Billing Summit award guarantees that you will be seen as a leader in your field and will benefit from increased business opportunities and, especially this year, improved team morale and motivation.

PLUS, this year, it is FREE to enter! Entries close on the 8th September so don’t miss out!

aimm is Chairing this afternoon at Carrier Billing Summit

If you are heading to the Carrier Billing Summit today remember to keep an eye out for our General Manager Joanna Cox who will be Chairing some of the proceedings today.

You can find Joanna speaking across the afternoon at the sessions featured below: