Brisbane 20-year-old Jack Bloomfield raises $2.5million in funding for ecommerce startup

A young entrepreneur who became a millionaire when he was just 17-years-old has raised $2.55million for his own refund fraud detection startup.

Jack Bloomfield, 20, from Brisbane founded his company Disputify two years ago with the aim to help online businesses detect purchases which are likely fraudulent.

His business has been backed by Australian venture capital fund Blackbird Ventures, as well as the founders from BigCommerce, WooCommerce and Google Shopping.

Mr Bloomfield’s passion for success started when he was just 12 when he designed the website ‘Next Gifts’ that enabled users to design cards online before sending them in the post. 

Then In 2017, the school student started his parent company BloomVentures, which run a variety of ecommerce stores that sell everything from skincare products to novelty items.

 

From there came Disputify after he realised how frequently customers were trying to fraudulently ask for refunds.

‘We had this issue with real people buying products from us, using their own name and information, and we’d have support requests come through asking for refunds for a variety of reasons like they’d never received it, or it was faulty,’ he told The Australian Financial Review.

‘At first, we thought it was our problem, but then we realised it was the same people.’

Mr Bloomfield said there were even forums where people reveal which merchants are the easiest to rip off.

He estimated that up to 5 per cent of his customers from his ecommerce businesses were wrongly claiming refunds.

Disputify analyses the behaviour of customers when they go to purchase an item and when they request a refund.

If suspicious patterns are detected like someone repeatedly ordering the wrong size, the merchant is alerted to a potentially fraudulent refund.

It also picks up on if a customer has made a fraudulent request before.  

Disputify also rewards trustworthy customers by offering them instant refunds, instead of a wait that could be up to 15 days long.

‘The whole goal here is to fundamentally change the experience not just for merchants, but for end customers, and encourage people to be more confident when online shopping,’ Mr Bloomfield said. 

Disputify has 450 ecommerce customers, most based in the US with the company opening an office in New York.

Mr Bloomfield is hoping to have seven people on his team by July. Most of his four staff he currently employs are double his age.