Nigerian data science startup Voyance has launched Sigma, a fraud monitoring platform for fintech companies that aggregates data in order to block fraudsters.
Launched in Lagos in late-2019, Voyance is a data science company that builds innovative solutions to help companies extract value from their data. Its product suite includes a machine learning and data wrangling platform currently piloted by banks and fintechs.
The company, which is currently backed by a private angel investor and Magic.fund, has just added a new product to its suite – Sigma. A fraud graph database platform, Sigma helps fintech companies in blocking known fraudsters from performing activities on their platform.
Contributing companies in the Sigma alliance can submit known fraudster identifiers like BVN, phone number and more, which enables others in the alliance to lookup an identifier in the graph database. All data submitted to the graph database is anonymised.
At Voyance, we believe deeply in data,” said Abdul Hassan, co-founder and head of product at Voyance.
“With vast experience in working with data science, we decided to build a data-driven fraud infrastructure product for the good of the ecosystem since there’s currently no way for companies to block known fraudsters from their platform which results in incredible amount of chargebacks and monetary losses for fintech companies.”
Eighty per cent of fraudulent transactions are performed by the same individuals, with a fraudster until now able to use the same identifiers fraudulently with different companies as those companies are usually not aware of the status of that user. Sigma has been launched to solve this. Voyance charges a subscription fee for the service, and is active in Nigeria and Ghana with plans to expand to South Africa this year.
