ThreatMetrix Alternatives & Competitors

LexisNexis’s anti-fraud software  (ThreatMetrix) utilizes its huge databases to offer comprehensive security and protection, but how does it stack up against its competitors?

We break down ThreatMetrix’s biggest perks and highest hurdles, as well as six potential alternatives that may offer different user experiences.

Disclaimer: Everything you’ll read in this article was gleaned from online research, including user reviews. We did not have time to manually test every tool. This article was last updated in Q3 2023. Please feel free to contact us to request an update/correction.

Best ThreatMetrix Alternatives 

CompanyCore FeaturesNotable ClientsSummary
SEON• digital profiling
• whitebox AI transaction monitoring
• industry presets + customizable rules
• email, IP + phone data enrichment
• advanced device fingerprinting
Revolut, Air France, KindredUnique, in-depth customer profiling and flexible rules
Truvalidate• partner databank of 3 billion devices
• 30 million reports of fraud and abuse
• easily integrated with TransUnion software
• 2FA/MFA via device recognition
• proven history in iGaming
Intuit, CashStar, Aviva InsuranceUtilizes large partner database to offer fraud prevention with a per-transaction pricing model
BioCatch• 2000-point Advanced Behavioral Analytics 
• can be integrated into wider security stack
• tailored module to identify bank drop accounts 
• biometric fingerprinting pioneer and innovator
• proven reputation with enterprise finance
Nuance, Experian, MicrosoftProfiles users based on behavioral biometrics and cognitive analysis
Sift• end-to-end shielding
• specialized chargeback module
• affordable long-term contracts 
• includes content integrity tool for community-focused models
• blackbox AI
Airbnb, McDonald’s, DoordashA full loss-prevention suite in a single portal, with various services, including chargeback management
SHIELD• device fingerprinting
• real-time profiling
• persistent profile updates
• user-friendly workflow
• focus on gaming, apps, ridesharing
TrueMoney, Razer, MPL, OMNISpecializes in superapps and end-to-end app marketplaces
Simility• extensive PayPal dataset
• proprietary fraudster database
• graph visualization to spot fraud patterns
• chargeback protection module 
• proven in digital retail
Jumia, Luisa Via RomaAdaptive Decisioning Platform, a “data-first approach”, offers visualizations of analysis and big-data backers

Six ThreatMetrix Alternatives 

Here are six alternatives that overlap with the services offered by ThreatMetrix, reviewed. We’ve highlighted the areas where other products may deliver a different experience, good or bad.  

SEON 

SEON is a fraud prevention company, focusing on providing instant real-time solutions to a growing variety of industries. Primary features include:

  • complete data aggregation user profiling: IP, email, phone number modules, device fingerprinting, velocity checks, behavior tracking
  • customizable, automated risk analysis
  • instant access, in-browser installation, free trial, free support

SEON’s product is industry-agnostic, helping companies of all types detect and prevent fraud with minimal friction. However, SEON also shines in instances where other sources of information are obscured or just nonexistent, such as to assess the unbanked or underbanked. The end-to-end platform checks for suspicious anomalies outside of these metrics, utilizing behavioral and nontraditional data. All these metrics are also customizable, helping cover a business’s customer due diligence while minimizing false positives. 

These decisions are never opaque, as SEON’s platform provides granular, transparent fraud prevention and even includes a whitebox machine learning model (as well as a blackbox threat module).

Fully customizable to the needs and risk appetite of each business, SEON provides insightful data about potential customers while also actively deterring fraudsters. 

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SEON employs white-box models, allowing for immediate adaptation to your business needs and delivering clear and concise insights.

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TruValidate (Iovation)

A device-focused fraud prevention service previously called Iovation, this solution was acquired by TransUnion in 2018 and thereafter rebranded under the TransUnion umbrella as TruValidate

Prior to being acquired and diversified, Iovation specialized in device fingerprinting in the iGaming industry, with shared fraudster databases. Since its acquisition, its security features include:

  • large proprietary device database from years in the iGaming industry, some 10 billion unique devices
  • simple integration with other TransUnion credit programs
  • different user journeys with easy 2FA/MFA via device recognition

After literally decades in the iGaming sector, TruValidate has a global depth and reach, with offices in Hong Kong, Leeds, Mumbai, Toronto, Johannesburg, Colombia and Brazil. Thanks to the acquisition by American mega-credit agency TransUnion, it also has access to a 1 billion-user dataset. With these tools, this fraud prevention vendor offers simple and fast identity proofing and risk-based authentication.

Satisfied testimonials point towards customer service, accessible UI and, of course, consistent fraud prevention as the biggest selling points of the TruValidate model. TransUnion also offers a number of credit services unrelated to fraud, which can be integrated easily. 

In terms of potential shortcomings, it is important to note that this vendor’s proprietary database of 10 billion unique devices has been aggregated over decades, and a portion of that information could be stale. Some user reviews also indicate that the business rules editor can be intimidatingly complicated.

BioCatch

Founded in 2011 by Avi Turgeman, an ex-military whitehat hacker, BioCatch offers a biometric-focused fraud prevention suite, and boasts major enterprise clients such as Nuance, Experian, and Microsoft. 

Using his experience dealing with cyberterrorism and system vulnerability management, Turgeman’s product includes over 60 patents on fingerprinting and ID analysis tools. Indeed, BioCatch is certainly one of the pioneers of digital behavioral biometrics.

With biometric fingerprinting techniques at the forefront of the design, BioCatch offers fraud solutions via:

  • User/criminal behavior profiling: Looks at patterns like typing cadence, mouse movements and swiping habits and, combined with device recognition, creates an additional layer of authentication.
  • malware and RAT detection: Using similar behavioral recognition, BioCatch compares typical hand-eye coordination patterns to identify remote access tools often used to defraud a digital storefront. 
  • robotic detection: BioCatch requires users to exhibit typical human biometric behavior, so bots that fail passive hand-eye coordination tests are automatically blocked.

Though BioCatch offers over 2000 different parameters to identify malicious actors, it can also be integrated with other anti-fraud products, including digital footprinting, IDV and KYC modules.

If you are a business considering BioCatch as a fraud prevention tool, it is relevant to note that the business model is highly focused on the largest enterprise businesses and financial services, and commands costs that are commensurate. Perhaps for this reason, user-level reviews online are sparse.

BioCatch’s suite is focused heavily on catching bots, emulators, ATOs and other account-hacking fraud, with fairly light layers of KYC. Potential customers in the financial sector can be confident that BioCatch offers both a valuable product and expert support.

Sift

Originally based out of San Francisco, Sift was founded in 2011 by Brandon Ballinger and Jason Tan.

Focusing on enterprise businesses with huge volumes of transactions, like Airbnb, Doordash, and HelloFresh, Sift prides itself on helping mitigate loss per transaction through fraud prevention and chargeback management.

Their flagship product is the Digital Trust & Safety Suite, which uses blackbox machine learning to offer services like:

  • Passwordless authentication: Designed to both minimize friction while also strengthening security, Keyless is an entire arm of Sift that relies on biometric authentication to prevent phishing and ATO.
  • Content integrity: For certain digital platforms, fraudulent content generated by malicious users may be a large factor in reputation. Sift offers a blackbox machine learning tool to combat it that keeps track of suspicious content creators.
  • Dispute management: Focusing on automation, Sift’s chargeback tool uses real-time data to help prevent invalid disputes, track known chargeback abusers, and then provide insightful data on the customer base.
  • ATO prevention: Using data from over 100 signals from each user, Sift’s fraud prevention suite looks to prevent account takeovers through their blackbox machine learning model.
  • Single integrated portal: Sift’s range of products, including third party programs like the aforementioned Keyless authentication tool, are accessible through a single gateway.

Sift’s blackbox approach to machine learning offers some distinct conveniences for the enterprise digital storefronts it markets towards. When dealing with thousands of transactions per day, automating and streamlining the authentication and KYC process is a major part of minimizing friction, and this kind of AI keeps it simple.

Reviews of the Sift Digital Trust & Safety Suite published online express a lot of satisfaction with the product’s functionality in terms of fraud prevention, and even small businesses generally seem happy with the support they are given.

SHIELD

The Singapore-based fraud-fighting firm was founded in 2008 and has since expanded its global footprint to include offices in San Francisco, London, Berlin, Bangkok, Jakarta, Beijing, and Bangalore. 

Clients of SHIELD include gaming giants MPL and Razer, burgeoning superapps like OMNI, and fintech companies such as Southeast Asian fintech colossus TrueMoney.

Companies like these, many of which have an inherent focus on mobile access – TrueMoney is Southeast Asia’s leading app for digital payments – are likely attracted to SHIELD’s focus on gathering real-time, persistent data. Like other offerings in its sector, SHIELD’s proprietary machine-learning algorithms assess the risk factors of thousands of accessible data points, updating this data persistently throughout every user’s session. This allows users to pinpoint the exact moment a customer turns into a fraudster, allowing the company to both preclude the fraud, but also gather data on how to further secure their transactions moving forward.

Combined with malicious technology detection, SHIELD purports to directly mitigate the damage from fraud typically associated with the gaming, ridesharing, and superapp marketplaces face:

  • payment fraud
  • referral/promo abuse
  • spam/user abuse
  • account sharing/subscription abuse
  • ad fraud
  • bot attacks

Simility

After being founded by former Google employees in 2014, it took only four years for Simility to be acquired by PayPal to put its end-to-end fraud prevention services to work. 

Since then, Simility’s portfolio of clients focuses mainly on financial services and online retailers such as Jumia and Luisa Via Roma. 

Simility’s fraud fighting offerings are built around its Adaptive Decisioning Platform, which, along with the proprietary database of fingerprinting markers, can access PayPal’s extensive dataset to analyze potential fraudsters. To make the product attractive to a wide market, the UI focuses on flexibility and the ability to change dynamically to meet the individual needs of its client base, and the equally individual fraud problems. 

This kind of automation-focused decision-making can be a challenge to understand, which is why Simility presents a product that does a lot of work to explain itself. The Adaptive Decisioning Platform touts a feature that produces a model-agnostic dataset to be analyzed by a business’s data scientists, and also organizes the dataset into a visualized graph to assist in picking out greater trends in fraud attacks.

The company’s business model currently focuses on enterprise-level storefronts and offers a structured contract as a payment plan. This should be considered by potential customers, as a few reviews published online indicate this as a shortcoming rather than an asset for their companies.

What Does ThreatMetrix Offer?

Originally founded by an Australian team in 2005, the digital authentication platform ThreatMetrix was first acquired by London-based datalytics firm Relx Group before finding its home as part of the LexisNexis Risk Solutions suite. 

ThreatMetrix utilizes the LexisNexis database of over 78 billion instances of data to predict customer risk, and can also be integrated with other LexisNexis solutions. The primary offering of the program prevents transaction fraud and identity fraud, and includes on-premises support when setting up the infrastructure.

Why Look for a ThreatMetrix Alternative?

Though a recognized name in the risk prevention landscape, Threatmetrix is not ideal for everyone. Here are some reasons why one might want to look elsewhere.

By itself, ThreatMetrix does not offer a complete profile of customers and, to generate a 360-degree understanding, other, paid products from the LexisNexis portfolio are required.

Some reviews suggest that the portal is potentially overwhelming for a less tech-savvy user. Integration with non-LexisNexis products seems to present regular hiccups as well.

Customers sometimes report false positives, resulting in friction and churn.

Currently, ThreatMetrix offers no free trial, and can only be accessed with a full contract.

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Conclusion

The landscape of anti-fraud software choices continues to grow and evolve, just as the malicious techniques of fraudsters do. There are options that can be tailored to fit every vertical, and it is often best to take advantage of such customization. In the case of ThreatMetrix, the customers best suited to use the fraud prevention suite will be companies who:

  • Are an enterprise-level corporation with a dedicated fraud team to maintain and use the software. Reviews published online suggest that the backend UI can offer a steep learning curve for those unfamiliar, with limited free support options. LexisNexis’ full security suite must be purchased separately, the cost of which will be easier shouldered by a large company.
  • Would like on-site support for both installation and execution. With the UI designed for the tech-savvy, in-person support for maintenance of the security tools can be contracted with LexisNexis – for a price.
  • Already have LexisNexis solutions in their security stack. Programs from within the company’s security suite integrate easily with each other, but programs from other vendors require a degree of technical tinkering.

On the path to a fraud-free world, it is in the best interest of both the overall corporate landscape and the individual company to choose the fraud-fighting software that is the absolute best for them.

ThreatMetrix Alternatives FAQ

What cheaper alternatives are there to ThreatMetrix?

As ThreatMetrix relies on a structured contract for pricing, it’s difficult to compare prices exactly. That said, multiple components of the LexisNexis suite have to be purchased and integrated in order to provide the most complete view of customers and potential fraudsters, and LexisNexis will generally suggest that a company purchase multiple components of their security suite simultaneously, making them a consistently expensive option. Other vendors tend to offer much or all of what ThreatMetrix does at a lower price point.

Where can I learn more about ThreatMetrix?

To learn more about ThreatMetrix, its official LexisNexis page has extensive descriptions of its range of products. As well as that, review sites like G2 and PeerSpot offer some insights, and we have a comprehensive comparison between SEON and ThreatMetrix.

Further Reading

Learn more about:

Sift Alternatives | Emailage Alternatives | Kount Alternatives | Signifyd Competitors | Feedzai Competitors

Try our free tools:

BIN Lookup | IP Lookup | Reverse Email Lookup Tool | Reverse Phone Lookup Tool | Social Media Lookup

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