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Trustev

Forbes names Irish business 'hot global startup'

Trustev was set up in 2012 and helps to prevent online fraud.

AN IRISH COMPANY has been named as one of the hottest global start-ups by Forbes.

Trustev was founded by Pat Phelan and Chris Kennedy and is based in Cork. It works in the area of e-commerce and fraud elimination, and says it works with companies “to smash online fraud and maximise your profits”.

According to Forbes, it verifies the identity of online shoppers by “generating a digital ‘fingerprint’ through various social media accounts which prove you are who you claim to be”.

The company has raised $3 million from investors since it was founded in 2012 and it reduces the possibility of credit card or identity fraud for online retailers.

Tech Crunch reports that the company has just over 60 customers and that it processes on average two million customer transactions a week.

Earlier this year, Trustev was named the EU’s Top Startup by the EU Commission.

Read: And the Forbes world’s most powerful person is…>

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19 Comments
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    Mute Nick Hill
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    Dec 18th 2013, 7:57 AM

    Who needs Trustev when you’ve just won the Nigerian lottery. I can’t even remember buying a ticket!

    245
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    Mute Jenny Lynch
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    Dec 18th 2013, 7:52 AM

    Great to see an Irish company doing so well. Congratulations to them both!

    157
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    Mute declan hegarty
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    Dec 18th 2013, 8:00 AM

    O goody said the tax man……… Tax. Tax tax the genius.

    18
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    Mute Ronan Stokes
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    Dec 18th 2013, 8:15 AM

    Fair play Bies!!!

    22
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    Mute declan hegarty
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    Dec 18th 2013, 8:27 AM

    Pity he wasn’t born overseas then it might have a success as he wouldn’t have to pay tax in our fair green isle

    15
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    Mute declan hegarty
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    Dec 18th 2013, 10:39 AM

    You guys are red thumbing me as you think I diss approve of a good man going forward…not true….

    I just worry that because he is irish and started a buisness in ireland he will be treated wrongly and disadvantaged cause he is from here

    Probably wants to hire staff and inject capital here but will be beat down cause he is not an American corp looking for tax breaks

    Please read and evaluate before being so quick with your idle thumb

    17
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    Mute Neil Murphy
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    Dec 18th 2013, 11:22 AM

    People are red thumbing you because you’re full of crap. Startups have favourable conditions here, especially tax-wise. And the 12.5% is the same for any company. Negative Nancy

    33
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    Mute declan hegarty
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    Dec 18th 2013, 12:41 PM

    Really….. What tax legis are you reading

    A start up cannot have 75 employees on day one so they don’t get same rights as corp coming from US like google, Dell , Microsoft

    3
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    Mute Bee Shop
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    Dec 18th 2013, 7:48 PM

    I actually agree with you completely. Start ups here face serious amounts of taxes and tough start up costs and usually don’t get treated on the same level as say, an American Multinational.

    2
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    Mute Pat
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    Dec 18th 2013, 9:40 AM

    Thanks everyone for the nice comments, hopefully we can live up to expectations :-)
    We have grown from an idea to 15 people in Cork and Dublin in a year so in reality thats our coolest metric, plus we have a ton of open roles on the Trustev website.
    @johnappleseed
    we don’t only use social we have use social as about 15% of our overall decisioning on identity verification, on our internal tests (so far) it would take 800hrs of work by a fraudster to fake a profile to pass our decisioning engine, these guys take the easiest path so they will flow to sites with weaker security.

    80
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    Mute Paul Laffan
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    Dec 18th 2013, 10:41 AM

    Congratulations and well done.

    9
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    Mute Mitch Connor
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    Dec 18th 2013, 8:00 AM

    So what happens if your Facebook / twitter account is hacked?

    21
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    Mute Ridiculous
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    Dec 18th 2013, 8:03 AM

    Thats a good question.

    9
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    Mute John Appleseed
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    Dec 18th 2013, 8:20 AM

    Yeah or what happens when you’ve created fake social media accounts? I must ask them and see what they say…

    17
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    Mute Leo Latorre
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    Dec 18th 2013, 8:04 AM

    Fair play to them

    12
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    Mute Tom Newnewman
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    Dec 18th 2013, 7:55 AM

    Threats of fraud and criminality have a need for more precautions as with free education the criminals are as educated as the honest population.

    9
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    Mute Brian McMahon
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    Dec 18th 2013, 8:42 AM

    Are you saying it’s because of free education that criminals are as educated as they are? And that if it was fully fee paying it would be a way of keeping crime down?… meaning that high tech crime fraud or crime in general is a product of the lower classes?…… wow.

    6
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    Mute Barry
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    Dec 18th 2013, 5:07 PM

    As usual there are a lot of emptyhead comments. Pat Phelan has a GREAT track record as an entrepreneur, and is a great example of pick yourself up, dust yourself off…. If we could bottle this sort of success we’d be fine. In addition this is exactly the sort of development we need, brain based, low capital requirement, exportable….. Unlike the building trade where we seem to be still obsessed.

    2
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    Mute enda1... begrudgers0
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    Dec 18th 2013, 11:47 AM

    Great news, and it’s great to see that this company received assistant from the government. Thanks enda

    2
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