Next Caller Brings In $5 Million During Funding Round

As phone spoofing begins to infiltrate the consumer retail arena, some firms are fighting back against this new type of fraud. One of them, New York-based Next Caller, just completed a funding round to bolster its abilities. The three-year-old startup brought in $5 million, led by Crystal Towers, during its latest round, according to news from TechCrunch.

The company was created to remedy a hole in the market that Next Caller’s co-founders discovered when it became clear that it was a challenge for call centers to eradicate the issue of fraudsters calling in and trying to access sensitive account holder data. Next Caller’s technology is able to analyze carrier-level metadata to determine whether a call is legitimate or not, therefore, eliminating part of the issue for call center staffers.

“Next Caller’s unique approach to protecting highly sensitive information has made it the chosen solution for large financial institutions authenticating inbound calls,” said Tikhon Bernstam, investor and co-founder at Crystal Towers, in a statement reported by TechCrunch. “As a result, fraudsters that continue to move their attention to the call center after being stymied by EMV technology and other security advances are finding it harder to penetrate what’s traditionally been fertile ground for fraud.”

Companies that use Next Caller’s fraud detection technology are able to bypass the standard security questions required for customer verification. Instead, the Next Caller software is able to identify the caller, freeing up time for the customer service agent to answer the client’s questions or meet his needs without wasting time on identity verification tasks.

Prior to Next Caller, many fraud detection services required the use of biometrics and phone number “reputation scores” to determine whether a caller was who they said they were, but such customer verification methods are ripe for spoofing and fraud in retail, allowing Next Caller to create more advanced technology and offer security to its customer base.