As banks face an “invisible enemy”, London’s FALKIN raises €1.7 million to stop fraud before it starts

FALKIN, a British digital safety company that helps users stop scams before payments happen, has today announced it has secured €1.7 million ($2 million) in pre-Seed funding amid rising regulatory and consumer pressure for proactive scam-prevention measures.

The round was led by TriplePoint Ventures, with participation from Notion Capital, BackFuture Ventures, Aviva/Founders Factory, Haatch, Found Capital, and Founders Capital. The round also included leading FinTech and cyber investors such as Pierre Decote, Group Chief Risk Officer at Revolut and Ben Enckevort, CTO and co-founder of Metomic.

“The new battlefield isn’t payments – it’s persuasion,” said Boaz Valkin, co-founder of FALKIN. “Protection has to move earlier, to the moment before someone clicks, replies, or transfers. We’re turning AI from a weapon of deception into a tool for defense.”

Across the continent other companies have raised funding – Hawk (Germany) secured €51.8 million (Series A) to expand its AML and fraud-detection platform; Resistant AI (Czechia) raised €21 million (Series B) for document-fraud and transaction-monitoring systems; and Acoru (Spain) obtained €10 million (Series A) to help banks predict and prevent AI-enabled scams and money-laundering.

This pattern aligns with findings from a recent EU-Startups report noting that AI-related fraud losses in Europe have surpassed €1.3 billion, prompting a new wave of startups tackling threats such as deepfakes, voice cloning and synthetic identity attacks.

Within this context, FALKIN’s UK-based approach – embedding real-time, behaviour-based scam-prevention intelligence inside banking apps – positions it among a growing set of ventures aiming to shift digital-safety measures earlier in the fraud lifecycle, from post-incident detection to proactive deception analysis.

“Modern scams are sophisticated, and no single red flag tells the whole story,” said Joel Frisch, co-founder and COO, FALKIN. “The key is to analyse all the signals that reveal deception to build a complete picture. When we embed that intelligence where trust already lives – inside the banking apps people use every day – protection becomes effortless.”

Founded in 2024, FALKIN is building the next layer of digital safety for banking customers – embedded, AI-driven tools that prevent scams before they happen. The platform analyses behavioural and digital risk signals to detect deception early and protect customers.

FALKIN has already been used by bank innovation teams and tens of thousands of consumers across the US and UK. 78% of users reportedly said FALKIN’s tools made them feel more confident engaging online, and more than half said prevention is more valuable than reimbursement.

The company uses a range of AI digital safety tools that analyse manipulation techniques and signs of deception across various communication channels. These tools are embedded directly inside the popular digital tools people already trust, from mobile-banking apps to customer-service portals.

Scams have become the defining financial threat of the AI era. Deloitte estimates U.S. losses from authorised push payment fraud could reach €12.9 billion ($15 billion) by 2028, up from €7.1 billion ($8.3 billion) in 2024. In the U.K., over seven million people were affected by scams last year, yet 71% of victims never report them. With prosecution rates below 1%, financial institutions are fighting an invisible enemy with incomplete data and no deterrent.

Despite billions spent annually on fraud and scam detection, most systems activate when money moves – missing the emotional manipulation and deception that causes scams in the first place. The institutional cost is staggering: the true cost of each fraud incident exceeds four times the stolen amount when legal fees, fines, remediation, and staff time are included.

AI has fundamentally changed the threat landscape. Scammers now deploy voice cloning, deepfake video, and sophisticated copywriting tools to create hyper-realistic impersonations at scale – making it nearly impossible for consumers to distinguish legitimate communications from fraud.

What once required skilled social engineering can now be executed by anyone with an internet connection.

“AI has blurred the line between what’s real and what’s fake, and traditional systems aren’t built for that reality,” said Sam Stone of TriplePoint Ventures. “FALKIN’s vision to make proactive safety universal has the potential to redefine digital trust. We’re proud to back the team as they work to embed digital safety at the heart of modern finance.”

The funding will be used to accelerate hiring, product development, and integrations with financial institutions while supporting the launch of Safety Labs, which gives community banks and credit unions a structured way to easily deploy and evaluate customer-facing  scam-prevention tools with minimal lift.

The company is also expanding its integration ecosystem, enabling financial institutions to embed FALKIN’s protection layer directly into digital-banking journeys and communication systems.

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