Trudenty

Trudenty is a fraud and risk intelligence company whose core offering, the Trudenty Trust Network, is described as an intelligence layer for the payments ecosystem. The platform converts participants' own data into network-level intelligence intended to distinguish trusted consumers from first-party fraudsters, covering use cases such as pre-authorisation fraud and risk assessment at checkout and decisioning on claims, disputes and refunds. Outputs are delivered as Trust Scores accompanied by reason codes and fraud probabilities so that decisions can be explained and defended.

The company positions itself against losses from first-party abuse, which its website puts at over $100 billion per year, attributing the problem to data silos between merchants, acquirers and payment service providers. Earlier descriptions of the business framed it as a consumer data network holding pseudonymised consumer fraud risk profiles on a blockchain-based network, built from Open Banking and other data sources and anchored by self-sovereign identity so consumers retain visibility and control over their data. At an earlier stage still, the company was described as a Web3 self-sovereign identity startup providing privacy-preserving credentials for identity verification and KYC, with a planned pilot covering digital onboarding, KYC and passwordless authentication.

Trudenty lists an address at Level 18, 40 Bank Street, Canary Wharf, London, and is registered as Trudenty Ltd. Techstars' job board records the company as founded in 2022, pre-seed stage, with 1-10 employees and activity in Belgium and the UK, in the fraud detection, identity management and payments industries.

Founding story

Trudenty was founded by Lerato Matsio, a South African entrepreneur based in Belgium who previously worked at McKinsey & Company until February 2022 and, earlier, as a process control engineer at Sasol; she is a chemical engineer by education. She started the company after experiencing identity theft and resulting digital banking fraud through her bank in South Africa, aiming to give people control over their information and remove the need for companies to store personal data in centralised databases, using blockchain and self-sovereign identity technology. She brought in two technical co-founders with Web3, self-sovereign identity and African fintech experience.

Business model

Trudenty sells access to a shared trust intelligence network to payment service providers, acquirers and processors, and merchants. Prospective participants register interest in joining the Trust Network and are guided through onboarding starting with a demo. Intelligence is embedded into customers' payment stacks and processed inside the customer's own cleanroom environment rather than requiring raw data transfer, and earlier materials describe the product acting as a payments orchestration layer that embeds consumer fraud risk intelligence at checkout and refund.

Traction

The company reports being onboarded by merchants in the UK and France following its pre-seed round, and states it is ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certified. It won the "Ensuring Trust and Security" category at the Worldline Epayments Challenge 2023, placing in the top five of the overall innovation contest, and subsequently won the MPE 2025 Public Choice Awards Best Startup Innovation Award and Pay360 Fintech Pitch Live 2025.

Latest developments

Trudenty has published industry briefs on chargeback abuse, APP fraud and mule detection and what VAMP and the UK PSR mean in practice, alongside a recurring Fraud Trends Digest. It announced ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II compliance, and was recognised as winner of Pay360 Fintech Pitch Live 2025 and the MPE 2025 Public Choice Awards Best Startup Innovation Award.