Orca Fraud Secures $2.35 million seed round to scale transaction monitoring across Africa

Backed by Norrsken22 and Enza Capital, the security startup will use the capital to refine AI models specifically trained on the region's unique payment infrastructure.

Orca Fraud co-founders Thalia Pillay and Carla Wilby.

Orca Fraud, a technology company specializing in real-time financial security, has closed a $2.35 million (R40 million) seed funding round. The investment aims to expand the reach of its transaction monitoring systems across African and other emerging markets.

The funding round was led by Norrsken22, with additional participation from OneDayYes, Enza Capital, and CV VC Africa. The capital injection follows a 16-month growth period driven by increased demand from banks, telecommunications companies, and fintech providers operating in complex financial environments.

Founded by Thalia Pillay and Carla Wilby, Orca Fraud develops software that helps financial institutions detect and block suspicious activities. The startup currently processes more than $5 billion in monthly transaction volumes across 70 countries.

How the technology works

The platform focuses on "live payment flows." Unlike traditional security measures that review data after a transfer is completed, Orca integrates its monitoring directly into the payment process. This allows institutions to evaluate fraud risks instantly without interrupting or slowing down legitimate user transactions.

To support this, the company focuses on high-volume, low-latency environments—meaning systems capable of processing millions of data points in milliseconds without delay.

John Lazar, general partner at Enza Capital, noted the specific market fit for the product. “Combatting fraud in Africa is no longer just a backend requirement; it is fundamental in an increasingly connected world. By reimagining anti-fraud solutions from the ground up, for a mobile-first market, this team is solving one of the most meaningful problems of our continent,” he stated.

According to CEO Thalia Pillay, the speed of modern payments requires an equal acceleration in security measures. “Our mission is to fight fraud with solutions built for each market, not assumptions borrowed from elsewhere. Fraud is contextual. Risk is situational. Financial systems can only scale when safety evolves alongside growth,” Pillay said.

Adapting to regional data

A core component of Orca’s infrastructure is its use of machine learning—artificial intelligence algorithms trained to recognize patterns and anomalies based on historical data. However, the company emphasizes that African payment data is structurally different from Western datasets.

CTO Carla Wilby explained that regional data is often fragmented across different payment rails and informal in structure.

“We built Orca as a global platform from day one, embedding intelligence directly into live payment flows rather than layering monitoring on top,” Wilby said. “Over time, we’ve aggregated and learned from this data, developing machine learning models that reflect how money actually moves across the continent.”

Following this seed round, the company stated it will focus on upgrading its enterprise-grade infrastructure to better support large-scale financial institutions.