Stripe acquires Bouncer to supercharge businesses with fraud prevention

By Pavithra R

Stripe, a provider of economic infrastructure for the internet, has announced the acquisition of Bouncer, a company building card authentication technology to reduce fraud during online transactions.

Under the deal, Bouncer’s team and technology will join Stripe to further enhance the capabilities of Radar, Stripe’s powerful, machine-learning-based fraud prevention tool. 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. Online businesses can now leverage Bouncer’s card scanning and risk technology to reduce fraud and authenticate cards.

Bouncer will be integrated into Stripe Radar, which 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 is expected to 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. 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,” said Simon Arscott, business lead for Stripe Radar.

When an incoming transaction is flagged as high-risk, rather than blocking the purchase entirely, businesses can use Bouncer to verify that the card being used is legitimate. It 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. 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.

“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. 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,” said Will Megson, CEO of Bouncer.

Founded in 2010, Stripe is a technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet. Its customer base includes Wayfair, Peloton, Zoom, Instacart, Shopify, Instacart, Twilio, Westfield, Just Eat, to name a few. Recently, the firm acquired TaxJar to build the world’s tax compliance infrastructure.