Meet the fintech founder fighting fraud. Credit card transactions carry little information about whom customers are paying. This makes it hard for banks to know whether they’re sending money to a bakery, a marijuana dispensary . . . or a fraud ring. “Banks are relying on data infrastructure from the 1960s,” says Oban MacTavish, who cofounded Spade along with Cooper Hart, 29. Through data partnerships, AI and human review, the three-year-old New York City–based startup builds expansive databases covering tens of millions of businesses to provide banks with precise details about the merchant, business category and location. The information is valuable to financial institutions in the complex battle against credit and debit card crime, which, according to Nilson, cost banks $36 billion globally in 2023. Today, Spade is an 18-person outfit processing more than $1 billion in monthly transactions for over 20 customers, including Stripe and Corpay. It has raised $16 million.
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