Raj Ramanand has been on the front lines of cybersecurity for almost 15 years as the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Palo Alto-based Signifyd; his company predated the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence, but it presaged it, and Ramanand’s prescience has put his company at the forefront of the modern movement to keep ecommerce safe.
Put simply, fighting fraud is in Ramanand’s blood. It’s certainly on his resume. Prior to founding Signifyd, he was Head of Payments and Shipping Risk at FedEx for eight years, followed by two years as Head of Emerging Markets Risk at PayPal. Those experiences were instrumental in giving him the necessary wisdom to strike out on his own, so to speak, with Signifyd, where he has hit a home run.
In February, Signifyd announced a partnership with Swap, an e-commerce platform, to help the company with securing its cross-border payments infrastructure. Swap was founded in 2022, and working with a veteran player like Signifyd shows how the latter company has staked out fundamentally critical ground in a landscape where AI isn’t just used to help legitimate companies grow—it’s also employed to help scammers thrive.
As Ramanand said in a 2024 CNN interview, bad actors are trying to get users’ financial information to commit fraud, and it leaves the seller holding the bag, so to speak. “For most people,” he said, “they don’t really know that ultimately when someone buys something online with a stolen credit card, the retailer is responsible for the liability.”
The upshot? Retailers are overly cautious in turning customers away at the point of sale, but as Ramanand said, “there’s actually trillions of dollars lost in turning away good people, and ultimately that’s where AI can help.” As the interviewer said, it’s like “using AI to fight AI.” But Ramanand turned that around, noting that scammers themselves can use AI to hone their pitches; and so the cycle repeats itself.
In an environment like this, it makes sense to stick with the people on the front lines. The ones who fight on, and on. Ramanand is one of them, and it’s what makes Signifyd thrive.
