US-based customer identification technology developer Payfone has collected $100m in funding from investors including financial services provider Synchrony Financial and insurance providers Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance.
The round was led by funds advised by Apax Digital, the growth equity arm of private equity firm Apax Partners, and included Sandbox Industries’ Sandbox Insurtech Ventures, Wellington Management and private investors Ralph de la Vega and Andrew Prozes.
Massachusetts Mutual and Blue Cross Blue Shield invested through MassMutual Ventures and Blue Venture Fund respectively.
Payfone has built software that verifies the identity of customers on phone calls in real time, through processes such as ascertaining a phone number’s reputation and detecting burner phones, spoofed calls or SIM swap scams, whereby a fraudster takes over a victim’s number.
The technology facilitates onboarding, digital servicing and call centre processes in industries such as healthcare and finance. Daniel O’Keefe and Zach Fuchs, managing partner and principal of Apax Digital respectively, will join Payfone’s board of directors in conjunction with the round.
The round nearly doubled Payfone’s total funding to $202m. It secured $24m in an April 2019 round led by data analysis provider TransUnion, with participation from MassMutual Ventures and Synchrony Financial.
MassMutual Ventures and Synchrony vehicle Synchrony Ventures had already participated in a $23m round for the company in early 2018 together with private investors including Prozes.
Blue Venture Fund (then known as BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners) and Prozes co-led Payfone’s $23.5m series E round for in 2017, which included American Express Ventures, Verizon Ventures and Rogers Venture Partners, on behalf of payment services firm American Express and telecommunications firms Verizon and Rogers respectively.
The 2017 round also featured Early Warning Services, a joint venture between five financial institutions, as well as payment technology provider Transaction Network Services, land developer Maclab Development Group, RRE Ventures, Opus Capital, Relay Ventures and Strauss Zelnick.
American Express Ventures had already led a $19m round for Payfone in 2011 that included Rogers Ventures, Verizon Ventures, Opus Capital, RRE Ventures and Relay Ventures, then operating as a subsidiary of mobile device and enterprise software producer BlackBerry called BlackBerry Partners Fund.
