Home-grown online fraud management firm CashShield has raised US$5.5 million (S$7.4m) in a funding round led by United States-headquartered fund GGV Capital.
The round was joined by Heliconia Capital Management, a unit of Singapore's Temasek Holdings, gaming company Razer, venture capital firm Stream Global and Mr Tony Fadell, designer of the iPod and co-founder of smart home start-up Nest Labs.
The new funding will help CashShield expand to Silicon Valley. The company will open its first US office in Menlo Park, California. It already has offices in Singapore, Berlin, Jakarta and Shanghai.
It intends to continue its global expansion into North America, Europe and Asia.
The firm - founded in 2008 - says it has the world's first and only fully machine-automated fraud management solution. Its software has real-time pattern recognition and passive biometric analytics capabilities, which help distinguish between legitimate and fraudulent financial transactions.
CashShield eliminates the need for data scientists or fraud analysts to detect and prevent online fraud, as the algorithms are able to self-learn in real time, it said.
To date, it has worked with companies in various sectors, including e-commerce, digital goods, telecommunications and online travel, screening transactions across more than 190 countries.
Chief executive and co-founder Justin Lie said the firm was built to be financially independent from inception and is already profitable. "Without having to rush into raising capital, we had the opportunity to select our investors carefully, forming a strong team of partners and affiliates to become the global leader in the industry," he said.
This investment round is a strategic move to form long-term partnerships and accelerate global expansion, the company statement said.
Heliconia Capital chief executive Derek Lau said: "Given CashShield's leadership in online fraud management solutions, it provides a unique competitive advantage to many enterprises that Heliconia collaborates with. We are confident in CashShield's ability to command a significant market share in the coming years."
