Investing in...Burbank

Fraudulent transactions hit merchants where it hurts.

Last year, ecommerce merchants lose hundreds of billions of dollars per year in online payments fraud. The majority are a result of card-not-present fraud (CNP), including hacking, phishing, skimming and chargeback/friendly fraud. After accounting for additional merchandise, investigation costs, software expenses and chargeback fees, merchants lose about 3.5 times the amount of the initial fraudulent transaction on a per transaction basis – a serious hit to their bottom line. Globally, total online payments fraud losses are set to top $343 billion by 2027.

These sobering numbers explain a big part of our excitement about investing in Burbank. Burbank’s groundbreaking solution for enabling card present transactions over the internet, Burbank’s Card Present Over Internet (CPoI), uses the ‘tap and pin’ method to drive secure and frictionless customer authentication experiences that dramatically reduce fraud, processing fees and chargebacks for merchants.

Burbank’s solutions address the cumbersome, too-slow, two-factor authentication process by turning CNP into CPoI transactions. Using Burbank’s proprietary technology, customers own smartphones become a PCI-compliant virtual merchant POS terminal, allowing them to simply tap their card to their phone and complete their now card present transaction. Designed for issuers, acquirers and payment service providers, Burbank’s platform eliminates chargeback liability and significantly reduces fraud and false positives, which rampant thanks to AI-driven fraud detection software. This same core technology drives additional Burbank solutions including an innovative SoftPOS product and an issuer toolkit.

Burbank founder and CEO, Justin Pike, is a seasoned industry vet, innovator and expert in payments and PCI regulation (he was also the founder of eNett, a multi-billion dollar payment processing company and later, MyPinPad). We love Justin’s inventor mindset, and his powerful track record of building innovative payments solutions.

Since COVID, we’ve seen the eCommerce market grow to $4.9 trillion, with a 79% uptick in contactless payments – the new normal. So we aren’t losing any sleep over market size, especially given how applicable Burbank’s solution is across multiple payment methods and geographies. In the modern era of banking, cultural and technological shifts are giving way to different norms. Demand for novel, frictionless, secure payment options won’t be going away, even while online fraud persists. Burbank has created a unique technology asset primed to meet the moment.