Case Study: Alaric Systems

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Type: Growth Capital
Total Invested: £2.1 million
Initial investment: 2002
Sector: Payments system software
Website: www.alaric.com

Company Background
Alaric is a software company offering state-of-the-art payments processing and fraud detection solutions to payment markets Worldwide.

Customers include major financial institutions and Tier 1 retailers Worldwide, as well as a range of other companies requiring payment systems software including Travelex and First Data. The company is partnered with leading global software groups such as Oracle and HP.

The company is fast growing, profitable and cash generative.

Foresight Investment
As part of an institutional syndicate, Foresight invested £2.1m in Alaric in shareholder loans and equity through several growth capital funding rounds, the first of which was in 2002.

Deal Attractions
The changing dynamics of the rapidly growing payments industry presented a number of opportunities for investment. Foresight recognised the strength of the Alaric product range and the potential for this disruptive technology. The Company’s “Authentic” credit card authorization software is market leading and can process over 10,000 transactions per second. Alaric's other major product, “Fractals” is a rules based, flexible card fraud detection and prevention system, the particular attractions of which are its self learning capability which facilitates achievement of high fraud detection/prevention rates and its operation in real time.

Company Achievements
From headquarters in London and offices in Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne and Dallas, Alaric sells around the World. In 2009 Alaric announced a partnership with Oracle to provide a “Consumer Payment Hub”, offering, amongst other things, switching and authentication capability focused on ATMs and POS systems.

The Company continues to grow its customer base, entering new geographic markets and attracting both large and small customers from a range of industry sectors.