TL;DR:
- Confluent Co-Founder, Neha Narkhede, announces the launch of Oscilar, a fintech company fighting against online transactions fraud using AI technology.
- The company is self-funded with $20 million from Narkhede and Co-Founder Sachin Kulkarni, who both bring extensive tech experience to the company.
- The explosion of online transactions and the pandemic have led to a dramatic increase in online transaction fraud risk, with two-thirds of adults worldwide making or receiving digital payments.
- Oscilar’s AI-driven platform integrates aggregated anonymous risk signals into its machine learning models, which continuously train and test to get smarter over time.
- The company also offers a toolkit for risk operations teams to create and deploy new risk models without writing code.
- Narkhede claims that Oscilar is already working with “dozens” of fintech customers and has brought in experienced engineers from companies such as Facebook, Google, Uber, and Confluent.
Main AI News:
Confluent Co-Founder Neha Narkhede, today unveiled Oscilar, a new fintech company that is taking on the challenge of online transactions fraud with cutting-edge AI technology. The company, which is entirely self-funded with $20 million from Narkhede and Co-Founder Sachin Kulkarni, aims to revolutionize the way financial institutions protect their online transactions from theft and fraud.
Narkhede and Kulkarni, both seasoned tech executives, have a shared vision of creating a company that addresses the pressing need for an effective solution to tackle the rise of online fraud. In an email interview with TechCrunch, Narkhede stated, “We were both at companies with some of the world’s top engineering talent, yet both of us were confounded by how cumbersome and, frankly, ineffective the prevailing risk decisioning technology was.“
With their extensive experience in the tech industry, Narkhede and Kulkarni bring a wealth of knowledge to Oscilar. Narkhede, on the other hand, served as a LinkedIn executive, overseeing the network’s efforts to scale its data pipeline.
The explosion of online transactions over the past decade, accelerated by the pandemic, has led to a dramatic increase in online transaction fraud risk for companies. According to a 2022 survey by The World Bank, two-thirds of adults worldwide now make or receive a digital payment, and Juniper Research predicts that online payment fraud losses will surpass $200 billion by 2025.
With Oscilar, Narkhede, and Kulkarni aim to tackle this issue head-on and provide financial institutions with the tools they need to protect their online transactions. The company’s AI-driven platform is designed to revolutionize the way financial institutions approach risk decisioning, helping them stay ahead of the curve in the fight against online fraud.
Oscilar is not the first player in the payments risk management space, with several companies such as Nivelo, Sardine, Fraugster, Bouncer, and Hawk AI already working to tackle the issue. Despite the presence of these players, Narkhede believes that most companies’ investments in fraud and risk protection have not kept pace with the proliferation of online transactions.
What sets Oscilar apart is its heavy reliance on AI and machine learning. Unlike other platforms that rely on incomplete and outdated information about user behavior, Oscilar’s AI-driven platform integrates aggregated anonymous risk signals from across its network of customers into its machine learning models. The models are continuously trained and tested, with the feedback loop automated for a faster, more effective process. This allows the models to get smarter over time, providing financial institutions with the most up-to-date information to protect their online transactions from fraud and theft.
Oscilar’s in-house developed AI requires less first- and third-party data about past fraud incidents from customers to train its machine learning models. According to Narkhede, “Our machine learning models are continuously trained and tested, [and] this process is fast since we have automated the feedback loop that updates our models. As a result, they automatically get smarter over time.“
In addition to its AI-driven platform, Oscilar offers a toolkit for risk operations teams, allowing them to create new risk models, test them, and monitor. This gives these teams more independence and reduces their reliance on engineers for intervention and technical support.
Oscilar also provides customers with visibility into the models and parameters, ensuring that the models are working properly and free of biases. As part of the onboarding process, customer data is fed into the model to make sure it is functioning correctly. The company also has people in the loop throughout the process and shares the results with the company to ensure the model’s performance and effectiveness.
Despite the competition in the fraud defense space and the decline in venture investment into fintech companies, Narkhede claims that Oscilar is already working with “dozens” of fintech customers and has brought in experienced engineers from companies such as Facebook, Google, Uber, and Confluent. The public launch of Oscilar allows the company to engage with a wider array of potential customers and partners as it continues to work towards its goal of revolutionizing the way financial institutions protect their online transactions from fraud and theft.
Conlcusion:
The launch of Oscilar offers a new solution to the growing problem of online transaction fraud. The company’s AI-driven platform, combined with its toolkit for risk operations teams, provides financial institutions with the tools they need to protect their online transactions from theft and fraud. The company’s heavy reliance on AI and machine learning sets it apart from other players in the payments risk management space, and its continuous training and testing process ensures that the models are up-to-date and effective in protecting against fraud. Despite the competition in the industry and the decline in venture investment into fintech companies. The public launch of Oscilar opens up new opportunities for the company to engage with potential customers and partners.
