The ”freemium” model, long associated with mobile apps and video games, is coming to fraud prevention. Founded in Hungary and currently headquartered in London, antifraud technology provider SEON has launched a free version of its service that offers users its full fraud protection solution on a 14-day trial basis, after which they are automatically converted to the company’s new “forever free” plan.
SEON said it expects small businesses still building out their fraud fighting infrastructure to be the biggest users of the free option. The new plan supports up to 2,000 API calls monthly at 2 queries per second. Businesses that need more can upgrade their plan to a paid model.
“This democratizes fighting fraud,” said Tamas Kadar, co-founder and CEO of SEON. “It puts our fraud-fighting capabilities right at everyone’s fingertips, which is why it is designed to allow small businesses to have fraud protection in place while they are still building. We don’t want great ideas to be destroyed before they even have a chance to establish themselves. This has been the driving reason behind a free SEON plan since Bence and I became the victims of fraud ourselves all those years ago.”
It is unclear whether other antifraud solution providers will follow SEON’s lead, but it’s not the first time in recent history the antifraud space has encountered a new pricing model. In the early 2010s, providers began introducing managed services that reimbursed merchants if approved transactions resulted in chargebacks.
