PayPal on buying spree; latest acquisition is Simility for USD 120 million

PayPal serves 237 million customers and is doing all it can to keep those customers safe. Today it has announced that it is buying Simility, a fraud prevention specialist, for USD 120 million in cash.

The payment provider is an investor in Simility, it owns three percent of the company, among other investors like Accel and Trinity Ventures. The latest value of the start-up is USD 52.75 million after raising USD 25 million.

Online fraud is one of the biggest problem of e-commerce, involving people that can work inside the companies that provides the payments or the goods, but the growth is unstoppable, so all providers must be more safe than ever in order not to loose its clients.

The start-u approach is to use a set of APIs to monitor digital transactions. Simility is creating a ”adaptive risk management”, a protection strategy based on what the threat of the moment might be and created through machine learning that feeds from other data sources.

“Digital commerce has exploded, and fraudsters have taken note, adapting and developing new methods to carry out their crimes,” said Bill Ready, chief operating officer, PayPal, in a statement cited by Techcrunch.com. “PayPal has been at the forefront of developing innovative fraud prevention and risk management solutions for nearly 20 years, but until now, merchants haven’t been able to configure those solutions to manage the unique complexities of their businesses. Together with Simility, we will be able to put more control in the hands of our merchants to fight fraud while helping make commerce experiences faster and more secure.”

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According to the info that PayPal provides, the company is trying to become a one-stop shop for all things commerce, with payments in every way (online or offline). The company siad that after the acquisition it will extend  Simility’s tools to all the merchants on its platform.

PayPal made a few acquisitions in the last weeks to gather new technologies and tools reflecting the changes made in the payments world. They bought iZettle, payments aggregator Hyperwallet and AI-based CRM Jetlore.