Razorpay acquires fraud prevention AI-enabled startup Thirdwatch

Online payment gateway startup Razorpay has acquired Gurugram-based fraud prevention startup Thirdwatch for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition is part of its long-term strategy to use new technologies like big data and artificial intelligence (AI) to solve unique business issues, Razorpay said in a statement. 

The Thirdwatch team will be relocated to Razorpay’s headquarters in Bengaluru, the statement added.

Founded in 2016 by Adarsh Jain and Shashank Aggarwal, Thirdwatch’s offerings help in real-time fraud detection and prevention. Its flagship product, Mitra, evaluates in real-time whether a transaction is fraudulent or genuine based on a trust score.

Thirdwatch provides software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based fraud prevention technology. The company uses AI-enabled fraud-prevention engine Mitra, which reduces the return to origin (RTO) problem by 80% in ecommerce companies.

“The team at Thirdwatch comes with an exceptional understanding and expertise in AI, machine learning and data sciences and together we envision a future where AI will help e-commerce firms not just combat fraud but maintain a competitive advantage and significantly improve merchant profitability. Together, I believe we can help reduce frauds by 30-40% by next year,” said Harshil Mathur, chief executive officer and co-founder, Razorpay.

Razorpay will use Thirdwatch’s technology to build and introduce innovative technological solutions to improve the payment experience and avoid fraudulent transactions, the statement said.

“Fraud has been one of the largest and longest concerns for ecommerce companies. Most of their systems frequently fail while identifying fraudulent patterns and therefore not capable of differentiating between genuine customers and fraudsters. There is a dire need for a data-driven solution to help identify these patterns and reduce losses of any kind, to help the marketplace function at an optimal level,” Agarwal, founder of Thirdwatch, said.

Razorpay, founded in 2014 by Mathur and Shashank Kumar, is a platform that helps businesses accept, process and disburse payments. It currently powers digital payments for over 350,000 businesses like IRCTC, Airtel, BookMyShow, Zomato, Swiggy, Yatra and Zerodha, among others and plans to increase to 450,000 businesses by 2020.