Visa to buy Cambridge fraud prevention success story Featurespace

Featurespace is to be sold to Visa.

The Cambridge cybersecurity company’s technology prevents and mitigates payments fraud and financial crime risks.

Visa is a world-leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories.

The acquisition of the Cambridge Science Park-based company “will complement and strengthen Visa’s portfolio of fraud detection and risk-scoring solutions”.

Since its inception in 2008 by University of Cambridge Professor Bill Fitzgerald and his PhD student Dave Excell, Featurespace has garnered a client list of 80 direct customers and 100,000 businesses for its technology and become a leader in enterprise technology preventing fraud and financial crime. Investors include Chrysalis Investments, Highland Europe, IP Group plc, Insight Partners, and TTV Capital. Customers including HSBC, NatWest, TSYS, Worldpay, Danske Bank, Akbank and Permanent TSB are serviced by Festurespace’s 400 team members, operating globally from six locations.

Antony Cahill, global head of value-added services at Visa, said: “Providing our clients with solutions that can adapt to and anticipate the changing threat landscape is of the utmost importance. Featurespace’s strong foundation in AI will enhance our existing product portfolio and enable us to address our clients’ most complex and pressing challenges. We look forward to welcoming the Featurespace team to Visa.

“The combined expertise of Visa and Featurespace will enable clients to manage fraud in real-time and further protect the payments ecosystem using AI-fuelled solutions. This investment builds on Visa’s commitment to ecosystem security. In the last five years alone, Visa has invested billions of dollars in technology, including to reduce fraud and enhance network security.”

Dave Excell, co-founder of Featurespace, said: “Over the past 12 years we have served the financial services industry, building a company that has gone from strength to strength, and we are thrilled to become a part of Visa. With Visa, we can bring the innovation, integrity and purpose of our platform and our team to more payment service providers and ultimately, stop more people from becoming victims of financial crime.”

Martina King, CEO, Featurespace, said: “We are very grateful to this stellar group of advisors. Our teams worked tirelessly, literally, to ensure a smooth and successful transaction.”

An unofficial price tag suggested a figure of $925m.

The transaction, subject to regulatory approvals, is expected to close in fiscal year 2025.