Forter

Forter operates a platform that makes automated, real-time decisions about digital commerce interactions based on an assessment of the identity behind each interaction. Its product set spans account protection (account takeover and fake account prevention), fraud management (payment fraud prevention, chargeback reduction, false decline reduction), payment optimization (Smart 3DS, PSD2 optimization, issuer optimization, tokenization), dispute management (representment automation, dispute recommendations, order and claim consolidation) and abuse prevention (returns/item-not-received abuse, promotion and coupon abuse, reseller/reshipper abuse) [4]. The company describes three core platform elements: a first-party Identity Graph, network effects across its merchant consortium, and a decision engine combining AI, machine learning and fraud analysts [4].

More recently the company has positioned around "agentic intelligence," marketing a set of task-specific agents — Analytics, Payments, Dispute, Abuse and Integration agents — that automate analytics queries, authorization-rate and routing optimization, chargeback representment, abuse policy authoring, and system integration [0][1]. It also markets agentic orchestration intended to let merchants support purchases initiated by AI shopping agents while distinguishing legitimate automated shoppers from automated fraud and abuse [0][1]. Forter's solution is also packaged for payment service providers, allowing a single integration to enable fraud decisioning across a PSP's merchant base, with an optional chargeback guarantee, merchant-level reporting and analytics, and Smart 3DS decisioning [5].

The company describes itself as an identity intelligence provider whose network connects merchants, banks and payment providers so that identities unknown to an individual merchant may already be known to Forter [2][4][6].

Founding story

Co-founders Michael Reitblat and Liron Damri were childhood friends from Israel who worked in the US and encountered declined online transactions because of their complex online identities; the company's own account notes their credit card was rejected when registering the forter.com domain. They began their careers at a manual fraud review company that was later acquired by PayPal, where they concluded that manually reviewing transactions at global scale would not work and ran an experiment replacing rules-based processes with an AI-powered model that improved PayPal's fraud detection accuracy. After hearing customers ask whether the fraud solution could be bought standalone, they founded Forter to build a fully automated decisioning platform based on identity [2]. One report lists the founders as Alon Shemesh, Liron Damri and Michael Reitblat and dates the founding to 2013 [7].

Business model

Forter sells its Trust Platform to enterprise merchants and to payment service providers, which integrate once to enable fraud decisioning for their downstream merchants; sales are handled through a direct sales/demo-request motion [4][5]. Fraud decisions can be backed by an optional chargeback guarantee [5].

Sources do not disclose pricing or contract structure; the company reported doubling revenue in 2020 and recording its first cash flow positive quarter that year [6].

Traction

Forter states that in a trailing 12-month period over 200,000 businesses used it to process $350 billion in gross merchandise value [4]. In 2020 it reported a network exceeding $200 billion in annual online transactions and over 800 million shoppers protected, doubled team size across eight global offices, doubled revenue and a first cash flow positive quarter [6]. In 2021 it reported more than $250 billion in annual online transactions and over a billion shoppers protected [7]. Reported average customer outcomes include 72% reduction in chargeback rates and 46% reduction in false declines [0][1][4].

Latest developments

Current company messaging centers on agentic intelligence: a suite of AI agents for analytics, payments, disputes, abuse policy and integration, with additional agents promised, plus an agentic orchestration offering to support purchases made by AI shopping agents [0][1]. The company is also promoting its IMPACT conference in London (September 8) and New York (October 14) [0][1].