Visa headquarters in Foster City, Calif., on Aug. 28, 2019. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Payment processor Visa announced on Aug. 3 that it will buy Israeli fraud intelligence company BioCatch for $2.4 billion in an all-cash deal to add to its cybersecurity offerings.
“Account takeovers and scams cost the global economy over $1 trillion annually and AI is enabling these attacks at unprecedented scale,” said Andrew Torre, president of value-added services at Visa, in the announcement. “BioCatch will help our clients stop fraud before it reaches the point of payment. This acquisition is part of our strategy to help clients prevent cyber threats upstream, building trust into every transaction.”
Founded in 2011, BioCatch identifies patterns in human behavior such as keystroke and mouse activity, touch screen gestures, AI agent usage, and jailbroken devices.
Its AI and machine-learning models then assess these behaviors for potential fraud and financial crime, allowing digital banks to catch criminals in real time.
BioCatch said that around 760 million users and 350 financial institutions already use its services.
“For more than a decade, we’ve demonstrated behavior’s unique ability to distinguish the criminal from the legitimate. In the last couple of years, we’ve shown how real-time intelligence-sharing networks between our customers can amplify the power of our behavioral intelligence further still,” said Gadi Mazor, CEO of BioCatch, in the announcement. “Together with Visa, we’re even better positioned to advance our mission of making the world a safer place to transact and protect consumers from financial crime.”
Private equity company Permira first invested in the cybersecurity company in 2023 and bought a majority stake in it in 2024 at a $1.3 billion valuation.
Under the new leadership, BioCatch’s revenue and gross profit roughly tripled, which helped its valuation almost double in the last couple of years.
The deal is expected to close by the end of Visa’s second fiscal quarter of 2027.
Visa is a global leader in digital payments and processes transactions between consumers, financial institutions, and governments.
Visa stock had a slight drop of 0.13 percent on Aug. 3. The San Francisco-based company is up 5.5 percent since the start of the year.
Visa has invested more than $13 billion in cybersecurity technology in the last five years.
In February, the digital payment company acquired Argentinian payment companies Prisma and Newpay from private equity firm Advent International to modernize financial infrastructure.
Prisma provides processing for credit, debit, and prepaid card issuers. Newpay provides infrastructure that operates real-time payments.
On July 28, Visa released its third-quarter earnings, which included $11.6 billion in net revenue, a 14 percent jump compared to the same period last year.
Reuters contributed to this report.
