CYBERA provides a platform for cybercrime victims to report crimes and recover funds. Thus, financial institutions can reduce cybercrime-related costs and money laundering risks.
The growing influence of the internet, alongside the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to a significant increase in cyber crime globally. Cybercrime is predicted to inflict damage totaling USD 6 trillion worldwide in 2022 and is expected to cause USD 10.5 trillion in 2025.
Since the pandemic began, 74% of banks and insurers have experienced a rise in cybercrime. This shows, for example, in the yearly spending on cybersecurity by the Bank of America, totaling over USD 1 billion.
CYBERA is building a powerful network of NPOs, law firms, cybersecurity firms, government enforcement institutions, and financial institutions (e.g. banks, neobanks, crypto platforms) to enable timely refunds. Moreover, with such a collaborative network, they are building a proprietary cybercrime database of mule accounts to prevent cybercrime-related losses.
The startup leverages a freemium business model by providing the victim reporting tool for free and charging clients for the watchlist databases. This allows CYBERA to create an easy and light entry point to sell and upsell to banks, which are usually on long sales cycles and create a virality effect to spread among banks and financial institutions.
Using an API structure, CYBERA currently integrates with traditional anti-money laundering (AML) and transaction monitoring systems (TMS) as an additional data layer against cybercrime. However, as the proportion of cybercrimes, neobanks and cryptos are rising, CYBERA might become the fraud-checking and compliance hub of the future. They are also developing AI/ML-enabled intelligence features to analyze all the data, including that from other systems through integrations, as an intelligent hub for financial institutions. And that is why we invested in this startup.
