Meet the partner: Kount

At BR-DGE, we are proud to scale our modular payment orchestration platform, enabling enterprise payment professionals to access a global ecosystem of payment integrations through a single connection.

Our partners are essential to the payment journey, helping merchants deliver a seamless, end-to-end payment experience for customers.

In our Meet the Partner series, we highlight our collaborations with key partners, showcasing available products and functionalities, and how you can benefit from our extensive integrations.

This time, we spoke with Nisha Suwali, International Partner Business Director at Kount, about their fraud prevention solutions, the importance of partnerships in payments, and the key ingredients for successful collaboration.

Please provide an overview of your organisation and what you do

Founded in 2007, Kount is a leading provider of AI-driven fraud prevention, digital identity and chargeback management solutions for digital commerce businesses. Kount helps merchants to prevent fraud, reduce both chargebacks and false positives, and enhance overall security. Our solutions leverage advanced machine learning algorithms and a vast network of data sources to accurately assess the risk associated with each transaction. find out more at Kount.com.

How was your organisation founded? What was the market need?

Kount’s earliest innovations began in 1999. Dr. Timothy Barber developed and patented multi-layer device fingerprinting and proxy piercing to detect fraud on a retail platform. Originally, Kount was intended to be a payment gateway for that platform. And fraud control was part of the solution.

At the time of its founding, the e-commerce industry was experiencing rapid growth, but so too was online fraud. Merchants were facing increasing challenges in detecting and preventing fraudulent transactions while maintaining a seamless and frictionless shopping experience for legitimate customers. The founding team realised fraud control was a bigger part of the payments picture than they thought — and the core fraud technologies developed by Dr. Barber became the foundation of the solution that the market actually needed.

In 2006, the idea for Kount was created during a sushi lunch between Dr. Barber and former Kount CEO Brad Wiskirchen. Just like in the movies, the idea was literally drawn up on a napkin.

The business was then built with the mission of providing merchants with a sophisticated fraud prevention platform that could adapt to evolving fraud tactics and effectively combat online fraud. Over the years, Kount has continued to innovate and evolve its solutions to meet the changing needs of the digital commerce landscape, becoming a leading provider of AI-driven solutions in the fraud prevention and digital identity space.

How do you work in partnership with BR-DGE?

Kount is pre-integrated with BR-DGE’s orchestration platform, which means that BR-DGE’s merchant customers can quickly and easily integrate with Kount’s services – without the need for additional technical resources or complex projects. This partnership allows BR-DGE merchants to streamline their fraud and chargeback prevention efforts by working with us as a strategic technology partner.

Via the BR-DGE integration, Kount offers real-time transaction fraud monitoring and chargeback prevention, irrespective of the merchant's chosen gateway or acquirer. This can help provide a unified approach to fraud and chargeback management that catches fraud earlier in the transaction process. This way, merchants can reduce downstream costs such as 3DS, gateway and acquirer fees, because the fraudulent payment is blocked before it gets further down the processing chain.

Kount is also able to support merchants to optimise their payment strategies, to avoid checkout friction and basket abandonment, by using TRA (Transaction Risk Analysis) exemptions. T can only be done by implementing a pre-authorisation fraud tool, which is an approach that Kount enables.

How would you describe organisation’s role in the wider payment ecosystem?

Kount plays an active role in the wider payments ecosystem as a leading provider of AI-driven fraud prevention and digital identity solutions. We contribute in several key ways:

Fraud prevention and chargeback management: payment fraud is a growing problem for most businesses, According to a recent Ethoca report, in 2023 fraud losses for digital payments reached a massive $20 billion. Global card-not-present (CNP) fraud losses are set to continue growing, to reach $28.1 billion by 2026 - a 40% increase from 2023.

Kount helps merchants, payment processors, and financial institutions protect against fraud by leveraging advanced machine learning algorithms and data analytics. These technologies enable Kount’s solutions to detect and prevent fraud in real time, reducing chargebacks, mitigating losses, and safeguarding the integrity of the payments ecosystem.

Compliance: keeping up with changing regulations can be a huge headache for many businesses. Kount eases this burden for merchants, helping them stay compliant with regulatory requirements such as PSD2 (Payment Services Directive 2) and SCA (Strong Customer Authentication), by providing advanced fraud prevention capabilities and identity verification solutions that align with regulatory standards.

For instance, our real-time transaction monitoring solution, enables merchants to detect and respond to suspicious activity promptly. This helps ensure compliance with PSD2's requirement for continuous transaction monitoring.

Kount's risk-based authentication capabilities allow merchants to assess the risk associated with each transaction and apply SCA only when necessary. By analysing factors such as device fingerprinting, geolocation, and behavioural patterns and dynamically adjusting authentication requirements based on transaction risk, Kount helps merchants leverage SCA exemptions, to minimise friction for legitimate customers and boost conversion rates.

Industry Collaboration: At Kount, we believe that partnerships are vital and we collaborate with payment processors, card networks, industry associations, and technology partners, to drive innovation, share best practices, and address emerging fraud threats collectively. This collaborative approach strengthens the resilience of the payments ecosystem and fosters a safer and more secure environment for all participants.

For more information on how you can access Kount's digital fraud prevention solutions and maximise the partnership through BR-DGE’s orchestration suite, get in touch with the team.