nSure.ai

From a gift card platform to nSure.ai: the company's origins

According to the company's official story, nSure's roots lie in a gift card platform set up in 2013. Payment fraud and a high rate of chargebacks led its operators to develop their own fraud detection system, after existing solutions forced them to turn away legitimate buyers too. After comparing their models with competing solutions, nSure was set up as an independent company in 2019. The founding story names Alex Zeltcer and Ziv Isaiah as founders, backed by Kamet, AXA's incubator. The same company's leadership page also lists Pascal Podvin as co-founder and chief revenue officer; it does not make clear his exact role in the 2019 founding.

Three layers of protection: SoftApproval, StingBack, DynamicKYC

nSure.ai's product combines three components: SoftApproval, which examines customer behavior based on principles of behavioral economics and challenges suspicious transactions without rejecting them outright; StingBack, an additional deterrence mechanism against repeat attackers; and DynamicKYC, a streamlined customer identification tool. According to the company, a decision on a transaction is made in less than 500 milliseconds, so as not to harm the shopping experience of legitimate customers.

Funding: a seed round, a Series A, and a total of $25.4 million

nSure.ai raised $6.8 million in a seed round in June 2021, led by DisruptiveAI with participation from the insurer Phoenix, Kamet (AXA's subsidiary) and Moneta Seeds. In March 2022 the company raised a further $18 million Series A round led by MoreTech Ventures; according to SecurityWeek, the company's total funding at that point stood at $25.4 million. According to TechCrunch, by June 2021 the company had approved transactions worth a cumulative total of nearly $1 billion since its launch in 2019.

A distinctive guarantee: 100% of the financial liability for fraud

What sets nSure.ai apart from most traditional fraud detection providers is its liability structure: in the company's own words, nSure.ai "takes 100% liability for all fraud- and service-related chargebacks", and it promises its clients transaction approval rates of up to 98%. In other words, if an approved transaction later turns out to be fraud, nSure.ai, not the client, absorbs the loss. This guarantee relies on insurance coverage from outside parties (the insurer Phoenix and Kamet, AXA's venture builder, and a stop-loss policy from Lloyd's), so the company is in effect insuring the accuracy of its own model. This is a relatively rare structure in the fraud detection market, and it requires high confidence in the algorithm.

High-risk fields: crypto, gaming and gift cards

nSure.ai deliberately chose three fields where traditional fraud tools have a particularly hard time: cryptocurrencies, where an approved transaction is almost always irreversible; gaming, with in-game purchases and virtual currencies that are easy to pass on; and gift cards and prepaid payments, an asset that can quickly be turned into cash. Its clients include platforms such as Paybis, Coinflow Labs, Eneba and Eldorado.

Background note: the flow of talent in Israel's fraud detection industry

Ziv Isaiah, a co-founder of nSure.ai and its chief technology officer from its founding until 2025, joined the security company Clarity as its chief technology officer that year. The move illustrates the flow of talent between Israeli security and fraud detection companies.