History

1992

The roots of IRIS Analytics date back as far as 1992. At that time, GZS (now First Data Deutschland GmbH), then Germany’s exclusive issuer and acquirer of MasterCard/Eurocard, set up a fraud prevention task force in order to address the rising problem of card fraud.

1995

The first major milestone was the implementation of a popular neural net based fraud detection tool in 1995 for the company’s credit card processing operations. This was soon followed by the decision to make improvements to the delivered product and to add functionality, developed in-house.

1998

In 1998, IRIS development was started. This decision was based on the findings and experience gained during the preceding years, in particular that neural networks suffer from severe deficiencies when it comes to fighting payment fraud in real-time.

2000

IRIS 1.0 was released and in live production at GZS. The neural network tool was turned off after a trial period of only two months parallel running.

2002

In 2002, IRIS was first implemented outside of GZS, soon followed by additional installations in Europe and North America

2005

The following years saw a significant reduction of both absolute and relative fraud losses. From a product perspective IRIS functionality was enhanced to cover debit cards and the acquirer’s end as well.

2007

Following the acquisition of GZS by First Data Corporation in 2006, the company was set up in early 2007 in order to take over the IRIS business, more precisely by acquiring assets and taking over the business of IRS Intelligent Risk Management Solutions GmbH, a subsidiary of First Data Corporation, under the terms of a management buyout.

With the introduction of IRIS 4, the product evolved in a truly multi-channel solution, now covering all types of electronic payments and non-financial transactions.

2010

Strategic partnership with Wincor Nixdorf (http://www.wincor-nixdorf.com) establishes a global sales and support network.

Today

IRIS Analytics is a software and consulting company that develops and markets the IRIS fraud prevention software product and related services to financial service institutions.