EXCLUSIVE – Fintech security company Tender Armor today raised a Series A funding from private investors. The amount was undisclosed, but company CEO Madeline Aufseeser told Bank Innovation the multi-million-dollar amount was above the industry average for the amount invested and the company valuation.

She declined to specify what she considers that average to be, or Tender Armor’s valuation, but according to a report the typical range of a Series A funding is between $2 million and $10 million. An important caveat to note is that Tender Armor is a woman-led fintech startup, which on average raises only $77 for every $100 a male-only founded team does, based on a TechCrunch study. 

The Series A was raised by private investors Aubrey Strul and Barry Beck, with additional funding through Strul Logistics and Technologies LLC.

The funds will be used to secure partnerships with FIs, payment companies, and banks as well as to build the mechanism to onboard these clients, Aufseeser said. Previously, back in 2016, Tender did a pilot with prepaid payment solutions provider InComm.

“Also, we’ll be moving into an office and are getting ready to hire to (to bring the team to a total of) between 12 to 15 employees before H1’18,” she said.

Founded in December 2015 by Aufseeser and Robert J. Steinman, Fort Lauderdale, Fla-based Tender Armor provides card-not-present (cnp) fraud detection technology for CNP transactions (online, mobile, call-in, etc), with a patent-pending CVV+ solution as its core offering.

CVV+ anonymously authenticates a user’s CNP payment card by generating a security code that only the cardholder can obtain through text, email, or through their card issuer’s banking site. The cardholder can choose to receive this code daily or use the solution as a one-time passcode. This code is then used in place of the static CVV code found on the back of a card to authenticate a payment.

“With EMV chip and CNP transactions on a rise, fraud is becoming increasingly important, obviously for the consumer,” she said. “But also, for the bank, fraud costs them money and customer attrition.”

This real-time, dual-factor, out-of-band fraud prevention solution is superior to biometric authentication, a solution that is gaining momentum, according to Aufseeser.

“Firstly, you can’t use biometrics the same way across all purchase channels,” she said. “Secondly, unlike biometric-based fraud prevention tools, this helps preserves the user’s anonymity because there is no correlation between security codes and the consumer’s identity. Also, from a bank’s perspective, no bank wants to be responsible for storing their customers’ biometrics.”

To learn more about the latest developments in authentication and digital payments, join us on March 5-6, 2018 at the Parc 55 in San Francisco for Bank Innovation 2018. Click here to request an invitation.