Payfone

Payfone, founded in 2008 in New York City by Mike Brody and Rodger Desai, operates a customer identity platform for digital identity verification and authentication. The platform is built on proprietary "phone intelligence" that anonymously measures a phone number's reputation and risk by processing behavioral signals in real time, producing a patented Trust Score used by enterprises to decide whether to pass a transaction. The system is designed to detect burner phones, spoofed calls, real-time SIM swap fraud and synthetic identities, while reducing friction for legitimate users. Alongside onboarding and login authentication, the company offers an Identity Pre-Fill solution to boost conversion and call verification tools that run passively in the background of a phone call to speed up issue resolution in call centers.

The company positions its technology as an alternative to knowledge-based quizzes, security questions and one-time SMS passcodes for onboarding, digital servicing and two-factor authentication. It later rebranded as Prove, whose cloud solutions and mobile intelligence-driven APIs are marketed as raising approve rates above 90% while mitigating fraud, with solutions available in 195 countries.

Founding story

The company was founded in 2008 by Mike Brody and Rodger Desai in New York City. Desai, who serves as founder and CEO, previously held engineering management roles at ExxonMobil and GE, worked as an executive in Accenture's telecom practice, and was CEO of Rave Wireless before starting the company.

Business model

Enterprise software and data analytics: Payfone sells its customer identity platform, authentication and pre-fill solutions to large organizations, delivered as cloud services and APIs that can be orchestrated into onboarding, login, servicing and call-center workflows.

Revenue is generated from enterprise clients using its identity verification, authentication and pre-fill services; the company reported 596% three-year revenue growth in Deloitte's 2019 Technology Fast 500 ranking.

Traction

Adopted by six of the top ten U.S. banks as of February 2018 and, after the Early Warning transaction, seven of the top ten U.S. banks directly; more than 1,000 enterprises and 500 financial institutions reported as users; one in three U.S. consumers authenticated as of June 2020; ranked #72 on Deloitte's North America fastest-growing technology list in 2017 and #185 (596% growth) on the 2019 Technology Fast 500; included in the Financial Times' inaugural The Americas' Fastest Growing Companies 2020 list.

Latest developments

In June 2020 the company announced a $100 million raise led by Apax Digital, with proceeds earmarked for acquiring strategic assets, strengthening machine learning capabilities and building a cross-industry consortium; Daniel O'Keefe and Zach Fuchs of Apax Digital joined the board. The company then rebranded as Prove and announced the acquisition of Early Warning Services' mobile authentication lines of business, multi-factor authentication and orchestration solutions and the Authentify line, bringing to seven the number of top-10 U.S. banks served directly. Geoff Miller, formerly of TransUnion and a former Payfone board member, joined as SVP and General Manager of the acquired multi-factor authentication business.