Visa buys BioCatch for $2.4B to detect bank fraud

Visa has signed an agreement on August 3, 2026, to acquire Tel Aviv-based BioCatch for $2.4 billion in cash from Permira-advised funds and other shareholders. Founded in 2011 and led by CEO Gadi Mazor, who joined as COO in 2018 and became chief executive in 2021, BioCatch analyzes user behavior during digital banking sessions. Its models evaluate thousands of real-time signals, including keystrokes and touch gestures, to score risk during logins and transfer requests. The transaction is expected to close by the end of Visa's fiscal second quarter of 2027.

This acquisition expands Visa's capabilities beyond transaction monitoring into pre-payment session analysis. BioCatch protects 1.8 billion devices and 760 million users, serving over 350 banking clients across 21 countries, including more than 100 of the world's largest banks, while processing 19 billion monthly sessions. This complements Visa's December 19, 2024, acquisition of Featurespace. Together, these tools bolster Visa's value-added services, led by Andrew Torre, who noted that scams and account takeovers cost the global economy over $1 trillion annually. Over the past five years, Visa has invested more than $13 billion in security technology.

The $2.4 billion price tag represents a 1.8-fold increase over the $1.3 billion valuation from Permira's majority stake purchase in September 2024. At that time, BioCatch had surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, achieved EBITDA profitability in 2023, and recorded 43% year-over-year revenue growth in the first half of 2024 with 200 clients and 400 million users. This acquisition occurs amid a broader surge in AI-driven fraud-prevention funding, highlighted by Tangos raising a $20 million seed round at a $100 million valuation, and Gradient Labs expanding its Series A to $26 million.

For security practitioners, this acquisition bridges the gap between session-level behavioral biometrics and transaction-level monitoring. Instead of relying on credentials, which are easily bypassed in social-engineering scams, security teams can leverage continuous intent scoring. Integrating BioCatch's real-time behavioral insights with Visa's global network will allow banks to identify coerced users, money mules, and unauthorized account takeovers before a payment is even initiated.