Executive Summary
Tuhk Inc., a Canadian fintech founded by veterans from Ethoca and NuData Security, has emerged as a transformative force in payment security with its collaborative fraud prevention platform. Following a US$6 million seed round led by FINTOP, with participation from Lloyds Banking Group and Capital One Ventures, Tuhk is positioned to address the US$10.5 trillion global cybercrime threat through real-time intelligence sharing across the payments ecosystem.
- Founded by veterans from Ethoca and NuData Security (both payment security companies)
- Building a platform for real-time collaboration among merchants, banks, and service providers to fight fraud
The Funding:
- $6 million seed round led by FINTOP
- Major investors include Lloyds Banking Group and Capital One Ventures
What They Do: Tuhk’s platform transforms fragmented payment data into a unified intelligence network designed to prevent fraud, approve more legitimate transactions, reduce chargebacks, and streamline dispute resolution. They’re specifically targeting the $10.5 trillion global cybercrime threat.
Plans:
- Imminent launch in the UK, US, and Canada with major banks and merchants
- Focus on combating first-party fraud (where legitimate account holders make fraudulent claims)
- Global expansion with deeper integration into financial systems
The Significance: The involvement of major banks like Lloyds Banking Group as both investor and customer is notable. Liz Ziegler from Lloyds emphasized that collaboration and data sharing are essential to stopping fraud proactively rather than reactively.
The company appears to be positioning itself as infrastructure for the payments industry – enabling secure, real-time data exchange between typically siloed entities to collectively combat fraud more effectively.
The Challenge: Fragmented Fraud Defense
Current Industry Pain Points
Siloed Operations: Merchants, banks, and payment processors operate in isolation, lacking visibility into fraud patterns across the ecosystem. When a fraudster successfully attacks one institution, other organizations remain unaware until they become victims themselves.
First-Party Fraud Epidemic: Traditional fraud prevention focuses on external threats, but first-party fraud—where legitimate account holders make fraudulent claims or abuse services—has surged dramatically. This includes friendly fraud (illegitimate chargebacks), account misuse, and policy abuse.
Reactive Rather Than Proactive: Current systems detect fraud after it occurs, leading to financial losses, damaged customer relationships, and operational overhead. The average time between fraud occurrence and detection allows criminals to scale attacks across multiple institutions.
Customer Friction: Overly cautious fraud prevention results in false positives, declining legitimate transactions and frustrating genuine customers. Industry estimates suggest that for every dollar lost to fraud, institutions lose an additional $3-4 in declined legitimate transactions.
The $10.5 Trillion Problem
Cybercrime costs are projected to reach $10.5 trillion annually, encompassing direct fraud losses, operational costs, reputational damage, and lost business opportunities. Traditional point solutions address symptoms rather than root causes, creating an endless cat-and-mouse game with sophisticated fraud rings.
Tuhk’s Solution: Collaborative Intelligence Network
Platform Architecture
Tuhk’s distributed platform transforms the payments ecosystem from a collection of isolated defenders into a coordinated intelligence network. The core innovation lies in enabling secure, real-time data sharing while maintaining privacy and competitive boundaries.
Key Components:
- Real-Time Data Exchange: Merchants, banks, and service providers share anonymized transaction signals, behavioral patterns, and fraud indicators in real-time without exposing sensitive customer information.
- Distributed Intelligence: Rather than centralizing data, Tuhk’s platform enables federated learning where insights are shared while raw data remains with each institution, addressing privacy and regulatory concerns.
- Proactive Fraud Detection: By aggregating signals across the ecosystem, Tuhk identifies emerging fraud patterns before they scale, enabling preemptive action rather than reactive response.
- Coordinated Decision-Making: When a suspicious pattern emerges, all participants receive alerts simultaneously, allowing coordinated response that prevents fraudsters from exploiting information asymmetry.
Technical Capabilities
Fraud Prevention: Advanced pattern recognition identifies first-party fraud, account takeover, synthetic identity fraud, and organized fraud rings by correlating signals across institutions.
Transaction Optimization: By sharing positive signals alongside fraud indicators, the platform helps institutions approve more legitimate transactions with confidence, reducing false positives.
Chargeback Reduction: Real-time merchant-bank communication enables rapid dispute resolution, preventing unnecessary chargebacks and reducing operational costs.
Dispute Streamlining: Automated evidence sharing and coordinated investigation reduce dispute resolution time from weeks to hours.
Market Outlook: Growth Drivers & Industry Trends
Global Payment Security Market
The global payment security market is experiencing explosive growth, driven by several converging factors:
Digital Payment Acceleration: E-commerce, mobile payments, and digital wallets have created new attack surfaces. Global digital payment transactions are expected to exceed 1.5 trillion annually by 2027.
Regulatory Pressure: Regulations like PSD2 in Europe, RBI guidelines in India, and evolving standards in Asia-Pacific mandate stronger authentication and fraud prevention, creating compliance drivers for collaborative solutions.
Rising Fraud Sophistication: Criminals leverage AI, social engineering, and organized networks to execute sophisticated attacks. Traditional rule-based systems struggle to keep pace, creating demand for intelligent, adaptive solutions.
Customer Experience Imperative: Financial institutions recognize that security and customer experience must coexist. Solutions that reduce fraud while improving approval rates deliver competitive advantage.
Collaborative Defense Model
Tuhk’s timing aligns with an industry shift toward collaborative defense. Major banks and payment networks increasingly recognize that fraud is an ecosystem problem requiring ecosystem solutions. Lloyds Banking Group’s investment and partnership validates this approach, with Liz Ziegler stating that “collaboration is the only way we combat the increasing global threat of fraud.”
This represents a fundamental mindset change from competitive secrecy to collaborative security—institutions realize that sharing fraud intelligence strengthens everyone’s defenses without compromising competitive position.
Expansion Strategy
Phase 1 (2025-2026): Launch in UK, US, and Canada with anchor customers including Lloyds Banking Group and Capital One. Focus on proving efficacy against first-party fraud and building network effects.
Phase 2 (2026-2027): Geographic expansion into high-growth markets including Asia-Pacific, with emphasis on markets with advanced digital payment infrastructure and regulatory support for data sharing.
Phase 3 (2027+): Deep integration with core banking systems, payment processors, and emerging payment methods (cryptocurrencies, central bank digital currencies) to become foundational infrastructure.
Singapore Impact Analysis
Why Singapore Matters
Singapore represents an ideal expansion market for Tuhk, combining high fraud risk with advanced digital infrastructure and progressive regulatory environment.
Strategic Financial Hub: As Asia’s premier financial center, Singapore processes massive payment volumes across borders, currencies, and payment methods. Success in Singapore provides a blueprint for regional expansion.
Digital Payment Leadership: Singapore leads Asia in digital payment adoption, with 94% of consumers using digital payments regularly. High transaction volumes create both opportunity and risk, making fraud prevention critical.
Sophisticated Fraud Environment: Singapore experiences significant fraud losses, with the Singapore Police Force reporting over S$385 million in scam losses in the first half of 2024 alone. E-commerce fraud, account takeover, and phishing attacks are prevalent.
Regulatory Support: The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) actively promotes fintech innovation while mandating robust fraud controls. The Payment Services Act creates clear regulatory framework for payment security solutions.
Singapore Market Opportunity
Banking Sector: Singapore’s three major banks (DBS, OCBC, UOB) handle millions of transactions daily across retail, commercial, and wealth management segments. Each bank operates sophisticated fraud prevention systems but lacks real-time coordination with peers and merchants.
Merchant Ecosystem: From e-commerce giants like Shopee and Lazada to thousands of SME merchants, Singapore’s retail sector faces constant fraud pressure. Merchants lose revenue to fraud and chargebacks while struggling with false declines that damage customer experience.
Payment Processors: Singapore-based payment gateways and processors serve regional markets, making them force multipliers for fraud prevention. Integrating Tuhk’s platform enables these processors to offer value-added security to merchant clients.
Cross-Border Complexity: Singapore’s role as regional hub means significant cross-border payment volume. Fraud often exploits gaps between jurisdictions—Tuhk’s collaborative approach bridges these gaps.
Projected Singapore Impact
Fraud Reduction: Implementing Tuhk’s platform across Singapore’s banking and merchant ecosystem could reduce fraud losses by 40-60% within 18 months through early detection and coordinated response. Based on current fraud levels, this represents potential savings of S$200-300 million annually.
Transaction Approval Improvement: By reducing false positives through shared positive signals, legitimate transaction approval rates could improve by 15-25%, directly increasing revenue for merchants and improving customer satisfaction.
Chargeback Cost Savings: Streamlined dispute resolution and fraud prevention could reduce chargeback volumes by 50%, saving banks and merchants an estimated S$50-75 million in operational costs and chargeback fees.
Customer Experience Enhancement: Reduced false declines mean fewer frustrated customers and abandoned transactions. For Singapore’s e-commerce sector, improving approval rates by 20% could unlock S$500 million+ in additional sales annually.
Regional Leadership: Singapore’s adoption would establish best practices for collaborative fraud prevention across Southeast Asia, positioning Singapore financial institutions as regional security leaders.
Implementation Considerations for Singapore
Regulatory Alignment: Tuhk’s platform must comply with Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) and MAS technology risk management guidelines. The anonymized, federated approach aligns well with Singapore’s data protection framework.
Multi-Bank Coordination: Success requires participation from multiple banks simultaneously to create network effects. MAS could facilitate this through industry working groups or regulatory guidance supporting collaborative fraud prevention.
Merchant Education: SME merchants need support understanding the platform’s value proposition. Partnership with industry associations and payment processors can drive adoption.
Regional Integration: Singapore’s platform should integrate with regional payment networks (e.g., PayNow, FAST) and neighboring markets to maximize effectiveness against cross-border fraud.
Competitive Advantages & Challenges
Tuhk’s Differentiators
Founder Expertise: Leadership team’s background at Ethoca (acquired by Mastercard for fraud prevention capabilities) and NuData Security (acquired by Mastercard for behavioral biometrics) provides deep industry knowledge and credibility.
Bank Validation: Investment and partnership from Lloyds Banking Group and Capital One Ventures provides immediate market validation and access to real-world deployment opportunities.
Network Effect Model: Unlike point solutions, Tuhk’s value increases exponentially with each additional participant—creating powerful moat once critical mass is achieved.
First-Mover Advantage: While collaboration is increasingly discussed, few platforms operationalize it effectively. Early market entry with proven bank partners positions Tuhk as category leader.
Challenges & Mitigation
Adoption Hurdles: Financial institutions are conservative and slow to adopt new infrastructure. Strategy: Leverage anchor customers (Lloyds, Capital One) as reference cases and demonstrate rapid ROI through pilot programs.
Data Sensitivity: Banks and merchants are protective of transaction data. Strategy: Emphasize privacy-preserving architecture where raw data never leaves institutions, only anonymized signals are shared.
Integration Complexity: Connecting to diverse banking and merchant systems requires significant engineering. Strategy: Prioritize API-first architecture and partnerships with major payment processors for scaled distribution.
Competitive Response: Established players (Visa, Mastercard) could replicate approach. Strategy: Build network effects quickly through rapid deployment and create switching costs through deep integration.
Conclusion & Recommendations
Tuhk Inc. addresses a critical market need with a differentiated approach validated by top-tier investors and banking partners. The platform’s collaborative intelligence model aligns with industry evolution toward ecosystem-wide fraud defense.
For Singapore Stakeholders
Banks: Early adoption provides competitive advantage in fraud prevention and customer experience. Participating in pilot programs with Tuhk establishes leadership position while reducing fraud losses.
Merchants: Integration with Tuhk-connected payment processors improves approval rates and reduces chargeback costs without requiring direct platform implementation.
Regulators: MAS should consider policy frameworks that encourage collaborative fraud prevention while ensuring data protection, potentially establishing Singapore as model for regional implementation.
Investors: Tuhk’s combination of proven leadership, bank validation, and network effect business model presents compelling investment opportunity in rapidly growing payment security market.
Success Metrics
Tuhk’s Singapore success should be measured across multiple dimensions:
- Fraud loss reduction (target: 50% reduction within 24 months)
- False positive reduction (target: 20% improvement in legitimate transaction approval)
- Participant growth (target: 3+ major banks and 10+ major merchants within 18 months)
- Chargeback volume reduction (target: 40% reduction)
- Customer satisfaction improvement (target: measurable NPS improvement for participating institutions)
The convergence of rising fraud threats, digital payment growth, and industry recognition of collaboration’s necessity creates ideal conditions for Tuhk’s platform. Singapore’s advanced infrastructure, regulatory sophistication, and strategic regional position make it a logical expansion target where success could catalyze broader Asia-Pacific adoption.
This case study is based on publicly available information about Tuhk Inc.’s seed funding announcement and market analysis. Specific implementation details and partnerships should be confirmed directly with Tuhk Inc.