Futurae Technologies AG, an authentication and transaction confirmation provider, has received a 5 million investment from a number of investors, namely the European leading financial services provider Euroclear, as well as the existing investors AXA Venture Partners, Zürcher Kantonalbank, and EquityPitcher Ventures. The investment allows the company to expand its team in order to grow in two key areas: accelerating international expansion and growing its fully managed authentication platform.

Digitalization, with its increased security requirements, continues to advance rapidly, especially in the financial services industry. At a time when secure digital interactions are more important than ever, Futurae’s innovative platform addresses the pain points enterprises face with strong customer authentication: exploding help desk costs, customer loss throughout the digital journey, and increased fraud, to name a few.

Over the past three years, more than 100 banks with users across over 50 countries have selected Futurae as their authentication platform. Futurae will continue its European market expansion, building upon its first banking customers in Germany, France, and Austria. The Futurae platform is also being enhanced with machine-learning capabilities to detect frauds faster and more accurately, all the while supporting customers with what they really need: usable solutions for their users.

Futurae Technologies was founded by Sandra Tobler, CEO, an experienced businesswoman and thought leader in fintech and the financial ecosystem, and two security and usability experts known throughout the industry for their research. Nikolaos Karapanos, CTO, with a PHD in authentication and web security, and Claudio Marforio, COO and head of product, with a PHD in mobile security and usability.

"The customer authentication market is stuck with insecure and unusable solutions that dampen user engagement and break the digital journey. The main driver of our rapid growth, besides the high usability and ease of integration, is the fact that we help our customers to massively reduce their high support costs", said Sandra Tobler, CEO of Futurae.

“With many years of experience in operations management roles, I’ve lived first hand the struggles companies face when introducing security solutions”, said Michael Shipton, who recently joined Futurae board of directors and is an executive director on the board of Euroclear Switzerland. “Futurae is an innovative security vendor that sets new standards to solve customer problems, rather than just patching a security hole: this, and the expanding market potential, convinced PwC Switzerland in introducing Futurae as an investment opportunity to Euroclear Switzerland”, added David Bundi, Head of Compliance, RegTech & LegalTech at PwC Switzerland.

About Futurae:
Futurae develops and manages an authentication platform extremely easy to deploy and use. Futurae empowers any web-based, app-based, and IOT-based customer interaction to be authenticated easily and securely. Every day, customers of over 100 banks and other organizations with users across the globe rely on Futurae to secure their logins and their transactions. For a demo, and more information, visit: www.futurae.com

About Euroclear:
Euroclear group is the financial industry’s trusted provider of post trade services. At the core, the group provides settlement, safe-keeping and servicing of domestic and cross-border securities for bonds, equities and derivatives to investment funds. Euroclear is a proven, resilient capital market infrastructure committed to delivering risk-mitigation, automation and efficiency at scale for its global client franchise. For more information, visit: www.euroclear.com

About AXA Venture Partners:
AXA Venture Partners (AVP) is a global venture capital firm investing in high-growth, technology enabled companies. AVP has built, in less than five years, a unique investment platform specialized in tech investments with $1 billion of assets under management through three pillars of investment expertise: early stage, growth stage, and fund of funds. To date, AVP has invested in more than 45 companies and more than 20 funds. The AVP team operates globally with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong. Beyond investments, AVP provides unique access to business development opportunities helping portfolio companies to scale globally and accelerate their growth. For more information, visit: www.axavp.com

About Zürcher Kantonalbank:
Zürcher Kantonalbank is a leading universal bank in the Greater Zurich Area with national roots and international reach. It is an independent public-law institution of the Canton of Zurich and has received top ratings from the rating agencies Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch (AAA or Aaa). For more information, visit: www.zkb.ch

About EquityPitcher Ventures:
EquityPitcher Ventures is an early-growth Venture Capital firm that supports promising startups from the DACH region. Through close cooperation with renowned industry experts, investors and exit partners, they pave the way for entrepreneurs to attain the three decisive success factors: capital, know-how and network. For more information, visit: www.equitypitcher.com

About PwC:
PwC’s purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. It is composed of a network of firms in 157 countries with over 284,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. PwC Switzerland has over 3,250 employees and partners in 16 office locations in Switzerland and one in the Principality of Liechtenstein. Find out more by visiting www.pwc.ch. “PwC” refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms. Each of these member companies is an independent legal entity. For more information, visit: www.pwc.com/structure