Amex Ventures Backs Anti-Money Laundering Startup EverCompliant

Anti-money laundering startup EverCompliant has announced an investment from American Express Ventures.

The companies said this week that American Express Ventures is joining existing backers Arbor Ventures, Carmel Ventures, StarFarm Ventures and Nyca Partners. EverCompliant, which did not reveal exactly how much funding American Express Ventures provided, said it will use the investment to grow its team and focus on technology development.

The company provides business customers with electronic money laundering detection and prevention technology, targeting transaction laundering that involves the use of a real merchant account to facilitate illegal transactions through a merchant processor or online marketplace, explained EverCompliant.

The company automates fraud detection for merchant service providers to prevent the processing of fraudulent transactions and to reduce the risk of chargebacks. According to the startup’s own research, there are as many as 10 percent additional unknown and unregistered merchants committing money laundering in a merchant service provider’s existing portfolio of clients.

Existing EverCompliant customers operate across North America, Europe and Asia.

“We are thrilled that American Express has decided to invest in our company,” said EverCompliant CEO Ron Teicher in a statement. “Their investment shines a spotlight on a growing problem in the payments industry. Having a strong relationship with this global payments network, paired with our continuous merchant risk management capabilities, will equip the industry with what they need to combat this new form of money laundering.”

“EverCompliant’s technology is helping merchant acquirers, payment aggregators and other service providers prevent bad actors from infiltrating their systems and ensure only legitimate transactions get processed,” added American Express Ventures Managing Partner Harshul Sanghi. “As more commerce shifts online, the need for advanced solutions that can help payment service providers fight fraudulent transactions will continue to grow.”

EverCompliant announced in 2016 that it raised $9.5 million led by Arbor Ventures.