Because hijacked payments are a huge problem. Here’s an example:

• You are expecting a payment, so you send an email to your counterparty with your wire instructions.
• But then a scammer who has infiltrated the email chain sends another email, pretending to be you, with new wire instructions.
• Result: your counterparty pays the scammer.

Exchanging payment instructions through DoubleCheck ensures that the right person gets the right instructions.

DoubleCheck uses a variety of authentication techniques to make sure that you are dealing with the right person.

​We collect information for the purposes of authentication only. We never use this information for any other purpose, and we never share it or sell it.

We are a team of security experts (led by professors in CS and math) who became very concerned about this fundamental flaw in the architecture of the web. The founders:

• Michael Walfish
• Andrew Blumberg
• Max Howald

Video ensures that DoubleCheck is interacting with a live person. It also provides a nearly unforgeable record, which protects you and us. This is much stronger than email, “secure email,” or text messages alone.

We don’t show your video to anyone, not even the person trying to pay you.

We delete it.

The whole thing should take you about two minutes. It’s even less for your counterparty.

That’s okay — if you have a landline, we can use that instead.

You don’t need to sign up to respond to a request. If you want to use DoubleCheck to send out your own requests, you need to create an account.

No. Once you’ve established a connection with a counterparty, the process is significantly streamlined.

Some parts of DoubleCheck’s verification process achieve similar goals, although the approach is different.

By getting into the email account of one of the participants.

The problem was $26 billion over the last few years, according to the FBI.

If you know them and recognize their voice, you can do that. But phone calls are cumbersome, surprisingly easy to do wrong, and subject to fakery.

That’s good! But no firewall can protect you from fraudulent emails from associates who were the victim of email takeover.

Even if your employees are phish-proof, it’s impossible to prevent your counterparties from being phished. Meanwhile, if your counterparties get compromised, you are at risk.

​Sadly, no. Their policies only protect themselves. But it’s not their fault, because they can’t know who your counterparty is supposed to be. Only you know that.

Long story.