Forter

Based in New York, New York, Forter is an identity intelligence and fraud prevention platform that utilizes artificial intelligence to secure digital commerce transactions. The software-as-a-service company serves over 400,000 businesses globally and has processed more than $2 trillion in historical transaction volume, including $350 billion in gross merchandise value over a trailing twelve-month period. Its enterprise client base features major retail and technology brands such as Adobe, eBay, and Sephora. Operating with a global workforce of 349 employees, the firm has raised over $500 million in equity funding from prominent venture capital investors including Sequoia Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners. To expand its core platform capabilities, the company acquired the Israeli bot mitigation startup Immue in 2023. Forter was founded in 2013 by former Israeli military intelligence engineers Michael Reitblat and Liron Damri.

# High-Level Overview

Forter is an identity intelligence platform that helps digital commerce businesses prevent fraud, approve legitimate transactions, and optimize payments in real-time.[3][6] Founded in 2013, the company serves over 200,000 businesses across retail, travel, and financial services, processing $350 billion in gross merchandise value annually.[3] Forter's core mission is to make online commerce safer by enabling brands to confidently know who they're doing business with, rather than relying on manual fraud review processes that cannot scale globally.[5]

The company solves a critical problem in digital commerce: the tension between security and customer experience. Traditional fraud prevention systems create excessive false declines that frustrate legitimate customers, while Forter's AI-powered approach reduces chargebacks and fraud while improving conversion rates and customer lifetime value.[3][6] Its platform spans fraud management, account protection, payment optimization, chargeback recovery, and abuse prevention—positioning it as a comprehensive trust infrastructure for e-commerce.[3]

# Origin Story

Forter was founded by Liron Damri and Michael Reitblat, who previously worked together at a manual fraud review company that PayPal later acquired.[5] While at PayPal, they recognized a fundamental scaling problem: staffing thousands of people to manually review transactions could never keep pace with global commerce growth. After successfully leading an experiment to replace rules-based processes with an AI-powered fraud detection model, they saw PayPal's accuracy skyrocket.[5] When customers began asking if they could purchase this new solution as a standalone product, Damri and Reitblat recognized the market opportunity and launched Forter in 2013 with a singular focus: using identity intelligence to automate fraud decisions at scale.[5]

# Core Differentiators

• Identity Graph at Scale: Forter's proprietary technology draws on a first-party identity graph containing 1.2 billion+ identities across its cross-merchant dataset, allowing it to identify known fraudsters and recognize new customers who are legitimate.[3][4] This network effect means identities new to individual merchants are often already known to Forter.

• Speed and Accuracy: The Decision Engine delivers 99% of fraud assessments in under 400 milliseconds, enabling seamless omnichannel experiences without latency.[3][4] The platform combines AI speed, machine learning sophistication, and continuous expert-driven model updates to minimize false positives while catching sophisticated fraud.

• Consortium-Based Fraud Fighting: Rather than merchants fighting fraud in isolation, Forter's network enables collaborative intelligence across 200,000+ businesses, creating a shared defense against emerging fraud patterns and attack vectors.[3]

• AI-Powered Innovation: Recent product launches include Forter Prism, an AI copilot that investigates transactions, builds dashboards, and explores connections across the merchant network to accelerate merchant workflows.[2] The platform also includes enhanced device takeover detection (20% accuracy improvement) and capabilities to detect GenAI-powered fraud agents.[7]

• Seamless Integration: The platform integrates with existing merchant systems through simple APIs and maintains preferred partnerships with major platforms including AWS, Salesforce, and Shopify.[6]

# Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Forter operates at the intersection of two powerful trends reshaping digital commerce: the rise of AI-driven fraud and the increasing sophistication of automated attacks. The company has observed a 2,107% surge in agentic activity across its network in the last 180 days and a 202% increase in automated fraud attempts year-over-year, reflecting how rapidly the threat landscape is evolving.[2] This acceleration validates Forter's core thesis that rule-based and manual fraud prevention cannot compete with AI-powered attacks.

The company also influences the broader e-commerce ecosystem by shifting the industry paradigm from reactive fraud management to proactive identity intelligence. By enabling merchants to approve more legitimate transactions while blocking fraud, Forter directly impacts conversion rates, customer retention, and operational efficiency—metrics that drive profitability across retail, travel, and fintech sectors. Its network effects create a virtuous cycle: more merchants using Forter means richer identity data, which improves detection accuracy for all participants, making the platform increasingly defensible.

# Quick Take & Future Outlook

Forter is well-positioned to capture significant value as digital commerce increasingly depends on real-time, AI-powered trust decisions. The company's evolution from fraud prevention specialist to comprehensive "Trust Platform" reflects market maturation—merchants now expect integrated solutions spanning fraud, payments, chargebacks, and account protection rather than point solutions. The introduction of Forter Prism signals a shift toward AI-augmented merchant workflows, where the platform doesn't just make decisions but helps merchants understand and act on fraud patterns at scale.

Looking ahead, three dynamics will shape Forter's trajectory: (1) the acceleration of AI-driven fraud will continue validating the need for AI-powered defenses, (2) regulatory pressure around payment security and data privacy will favor consolidated platforms with strong compliance records, and (3) the expansion of omnichannel commerce (mobile, social, marketplace) will require identity intelligence that works across fragmented touchpoints. Forter's network effects and technical depth position it to deepen its moat, but success will depend on staying ahead of adversarial AI innovation and maintaining merchant trust as fraud tactics evolve.