Venture Capital Firms

Investors, Verifone Holdings, RRE Ventures, and Venrock Invest an Undisclosed Amount in Series B Funding for Semtek

Based in San Diego, California, Santek announced today that it has closed an undisclosed amount of series B funding from Verifone Holdings, RRE Ventures, and Venrock. Before this round of funding, both PRE Ventures and Venrock joined the company’s private investors in adding extra funding to their series A funding.

Founded in 1999, Semtek is a company that has been a leader in the magnetic industry since its inception. Semtek serves customers who are both in the private and public sector and who need fixed data components for their wireless devices and fixed based data processing systems. One of the key systems that Semtek has been working on since 2004 is to improve the magnetic stripe that is found on the backs of millions of credit and debit cards. In this day and age, the magnetic stripe is beginning to become a major component in electronic payment for most merchants. These magnetic stripes are located in the back of credit and debit cards, and when you pay for something in the store, your credit card is swiped through a device that reads the stripe and obtains the information about your credit card account. This magnetic stripe is becoming an instrumental component of electronic payment for merchants worldwide, because the new credit card swipers require the magnetic stripe to make the purchase.

One of the major problems with credit cards today is that there are a large number of criminals who are computer and electronically savvy and work hard to counterfeit credit cards, costing merchants and credit card companies billions of dollars. Semtek has been pioneering the credit card security industry and the company’s technology is designed to make the counterfeiting of credit cards more difficult for the increasingly tech savvy criminal. To combat the growing problem of credit card fraud and counterfeiting, Semtek has both developed and commercialized a whole suite of technologies that are effective in increasing the security and stopping theft and counterfeiting. The partnership that Semtek has acquired with Verifone is a partnership that will benefit both companies, because Verifone is one of the first companies that pioneered end to end encryption of electronic data.

The partnership with Semtek and Verifone is not that new, however. Verifone and Semtek originally secured their partnership in April of 2008, when the two companies entered into a commercial agreement, where Semtek would be involved in developing key components of a new product that Verifone is putting together, known as the VeriSafe Protect. Verifone’s new technology is based on technology that is based on the technology that was developed by Semtek. Furthermore, this technology that is under the Verifone brand has experienced breakneck success throughout the United States, that the commercial partnership in between the two companies will continue and now includes a global initiative to market VeriSafe Protect technology in other markets around the world.

This partnership between the two companies also has great benefits to Semtek, because it allows Semtek to make its technologies available to other hardware companies that can use this technology on their products or platforms.

According to the CEO of Verifone, Douglas G. Bergeron; the people at Verifone are very happy with their relationship with Semtek. The relationship has been growing over the past year, and the company looks forward to future successes with Semtek. Semtek’s CEO Patrick Hazel also added that the role in which Verifone is playing is very important role in some of the technologies that Semtek has developed. Furthermore, Verifone’s leadership is key in this historically difficult market to penetrate.

Founded in 1994, RRE Ventures is a vc firm that has been devoted to help diligent management teams build exceptional companies who are in the software, communications, and software industries. The vc firm currently has over $850 million of assets under its management. Other companies in RRE’s portfolio include AdaptiveBlue, BetaWorks, Drop.io, GoMobo, Kashless, Pontiflex, and others.

Originally established as the vc arm of the Rockefeller Family, Venrock is a vc firm that has a global presence, with offices in Menlo Park, California; New York City; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Israel. The vc firm has invested in over 400 companies and has over $1.9 billion under its management. Some other companies in Venrock’s portfolio include IM Logic, DataPower, DoubleClick, MediaMetrix, and others.

For more information about Semtek, click here.

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