Anti-fraud providers in particular are crucial to ensuring a healthy online checkout flow. A poorly calibrated anti-fraud service can stifle holiday sales and cause customer frustration to surge due to inaccurate declines, or it can open the floodgates to chargebacks by allowing fraudsters to obscure their behavior among the increased sales activity. Even worse, an insufficiently provisioned system might not be able to withstand the increased order volume, which could result in blocked orders across thousands of merchants.

How to prepare for Black Friday 

At Signifyd, we recognize the importance of Black Friday and the entire holiday season for merchants, as well as our own vital role in ensuring success for our customers. That’s why we’ve enacted numerous, painstaking measures to fortify our capacity and decision accuracy. We’d like to share some details about the preparations undertaken to ensure that our system excels during Black Friday and the holiday season. 

Our preparations are focused on two main axes:

• Accuracy: Maximizing approvals on good orders and rejecting as many fraudulent orders as possible
• Availability: Ensuring our system is able to provide anti-fraud evaluations in a timely and reliable manner, regardless of merchant order volume

Upholding our bar for excellence on either front is no trivial task. As far as decision accuracy is concerned, promotions like Black Friday pose an inherent challenge for machine learning anti-fraud solutions because customer behavior during these periods is so aberrant from the norm. The models that underpin our anti-fraud service assess order characteristics to determine their statistical similarity to either valid orders or those generating chargebacks. However, Black Friday shopping patterns introduce complexities as legitimate customer purchases deviate significantly from typical patterns, with orders appearing less conventional due to unusual timing and atypical discounts. Furthermore, many characteristics align more with fraudulent behavior, such as a high volume of orders placed in a short period by users with minimal or no order history with a merchant.

More than a decade of fraud protection experience gives Signifyd an edge 

Signifyd employs a variety of mechanisms to overcome these challenges. First, we have an inherent advantage as a long-standing anti-fraud provider who’s weathered more than a decade of Black Friday events. Our proprietary training datasets contain many years of promotional events whose output is incorporated into our machine learning models’ decisions. As a result, our models “understand” to a certain extent how to interpret Black Friday abnormalities due to prior years’ behavior. 

But furthermore, during the holiday period, our Risk Intelligence and Data Science teams are working double-time to forecast and simulate purchase behavior and tune our risk thresholds accordingly to ensure optimal performance. This involves assessing historical data as well as incorporating merchant-specific context into our decision mechanisms, which requires close coordination with our customer-adjacent Implementations and Customer Success teams. 

Finally, during Black Friday itself, our Customer Success teams closely monitor live merchant results and coordinate with Risk Intelligence and Data Science to make any fine-grained adjustments to model thresholds and rules if additional tuning is needed. Ultimately, between our product’s capabilities that support precision performance tuning in real-time and our preparatory risk calibration and model training, Signifyd enters the holiday rush with confidence in its ability to provide highly accurate decisions that delight customers and frustrate fraudsters.

Holiday shopping volumes call for pressure-tested operations

Yet providing accurate decisions is only half of the battle. We also need to ensure that we can provide hundreds of decisions per second, without compromising on accuracy or system availability. During Black Friday, the surge in online orders requires a robust system to prevent any degradation in our decision latency or availability during peak traffic periods. Fortunately, our Engineering team is at the forefront of tackling this challenge, implementing rigorous load testing and proactive measures to maintain our operational status even in the face of heightened demand.

One of the main challenges of the Black Friday shopping event is the immediacy of the increase in order volume. Many promotions start at midnight, and order volumes can balloon from zero to thousands of orders from one minute to another. Although Signifyd’s cloud-based infrastructure is highly scalable, no system can scale quickly enough to avoid any degradation of service with a purely reactive scaling approach. 

As such, Signifyd preemptively scales its infrastructure prior to the holiday period to ensure sufficient capacity for any merchant needs. Then, rigorous load tests are conducted, simulating the anticipated surge in user activity to identify and address any potential bottlenecks. These bottlenecks are identified and remediated, and the load test is repeated until we achieve a satisfactory level of performance. This year, we were content after testing our system at roughly 2.5 times the forecasted Black Friday peak load — ensuring a healthy margin of additional capacity in case of any unforeseen additional traffic. 

Code freeze ensures smooth operations during retailers’ most critical time 

Finally, in an effort to limit the variables that might alter our system’s behavior during this critical merchant period, Signifyd imposes a “code freeze” on a number of our production services in the weeks leading up to Black Friday. Our system is locked into place to minimize the risk of any anomalous behavior during this pivotal phase for our customers, although certain merchant-critical changes and adjustments with well-scoped, limited impacts (such as risk threshold adjustments) are permitted. That said, code freeze doesn’t mean that development and productivity comes to a halt for Signifyd’s developers; changes are constantly being made on upcoming features and improvements, but they are not deployed to our production environment until after the Black Friday surge has passed. 

With the holiday season upon us, Signifyd strives to provide merchants with peace of mind knowing that their order flow is supported and secured. Our years of experience and months of dedicated preparation ensure that we are a reliable ally in the complex ecommerce landscape. We look forward to supporting our customers during the most high-stakes online sales period of the year, and we are proud of the service that our teams come together to provide.

Photo by Getty Images

Looking for pressure-tested fraud protection for the holiday season and beyond? Let’s talk. 

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At Signifyd, our interns gain valuable hands-on experience before graduating from college or university. They tackle real-world challenges and, in many cases, join us again after graduation! In return, Signifyd gets fresh new ideas from talented and hard-working employees while continuing to cultivate a culture of internal promotions. 

What follows are just a few of the inspiring stories from Signifyd interns, some of whom are now full-time employees.

Lizbeth Mejia: junior designer in Belfast

I started my internship at Signifyd in May 2021; and it lasted one year before transitioning to full-time. My first few projects involved creating office graphics and digital documentation assets. What stood out most was the collaboration and support I received from my colleagues, who were always eager to help me learn and work with me on these designs. Another standout aspect of my internship was the variety of projects I got to work on, each with its own scale and complexity. This isn’t something you find in every internship, and it really made my experience that much more enjoyable. 

Seamless move from intern to full-time employee

I was honored to receive a full-time offer, and even as an intern, I felt like a valued team member as my opinions were considered alongside other employees. The support I received from my manager greatly influenced my decision to go full time and the transition was seamless. I continued to work on similar projects from my internship and even had the opportunity to maintain our digital assets management tool, a responsibility that made me feel like a valuable member of the team.

When searching for internships, Signifyd immediately stood out as I was drawn to the brand image. I did additional research on the company’s culture which confirmed my instincts that it would be a great place to work. I recently had the opportunity to go on maternity leave and Signifyd was so supportive, which reinforced the company’s dedication to its team members’ well-being and work-life balance.

Aidan Cassidy: data scientist in Belfast

I was in my second year at university in July of 2021 when I started my Signifyd internship. I worked full-time for the summer. I then continued working one day a week while I finished school before accepting the full-time position I hold now. Having the flexibility of working one day a week while finishing my studies was super helpful and it was great to know that after school I would be able to start at a job that I already liked.  

The start of my internship was a lot of learning about how Signifyd operates and our internal tools. After the initial learning period, I began to work on developing model features and working on tasks for specific merchants. One thing that was really great about the internship was that I wasn’t expected to know everything when I was just starting out and everyone was really supportive in getting me up to speed. I learned about the different aspects of the modeling pipeline and things that weren’t covered in my classes. It was great to be able to actually do the work instead of just reading about it in classes.

Internships can provide a running start

I really enjoyed the culture and team during my internship so I was very excited to come back as a full-time employee. Since then I have continued to work on models and feature engineering. It was great to already have the context of what I would be working on when starting full-time and getting to use everything I learned during my internship in my current day-to-day. 

Desmond Madden: graduate software engineer in Belfast

I was an intern for about two years while finishing my degree before moving to full-time in 2023. I originally joined the team that automates billing for customers and really enjoyed it. Early on I worked on a reprice project and added logic to endpoints. About four or five weeks into my internship I was writing code that was actually being used by Signifyd. 

At Signifyd interns have a significant impact

As an intern, I was given a lot of freedom and learned a lot of software development skills including designing, testing and deploying to customers. It was very fast-paced and I liked that I wasn’t working in a sandbox environment. Most companies wouldn’t give their interns that amount of trust. 

I was very keen to move to full-time and felt like I had been working towards that during my whole internship. There is a great developer culture here and I received a lot of really good feedback from the team to help me improve. I tried to pick up as many new skills as possible which really helped. 

Anna Flannagan: risk intelligence analyst in Belfast

My internship started in July of 2021 and initially lasted about a year. It was later extended and I was able to work one day a week as I finished school. As an intern, my main objective initially was to approve and decline orders throughout my training. This gave me a good initial indication of how fraudulent activity looks and what falls within the range of bad or good online behavior. As a business information technology student, I was able to use some of the programming and analytics from modules within my university degree to transfer over to the problem-solving / investigative work that was required here. I was able to analyze large data sets and code rules when necessary to mitigate fraudulent behavior. 

During my internship, I built strong friendships with my team, which was incredibly motivating. With nearly two years at the company, I had an understanding of my role’s expectations and the support from the risk intelligence team ensured a seamless transition. 

Skills from an internship transfer to university and beyond

I developed analytics and decision-making skills, boosting my confidence as an analyst. These skills proved invaluable during my final year of university. Time management, adaptability, critical thinking and effective communication were other vital skills I transferred to my degree, enabling me to achieve the necessary grades and excel in my full-time role which includes analyzing and monitoring risk for my own assigned clients! 

Signifyd’s culture was ultimately what made up my mind when the decision time came for an internship. I wanted to work somewhere in which I could grow and develop. The core values of Signifyd exemplified this. Among Signifyd’s stated values are “curious and hungry” and “roll up your sleeves.” Those two values were the ones that resonated with me the most as I transitioned from university to the workforce. 

Brian Chung: business development intern in the U.S.

During my internship at Signifyd as a business development intern, I had a valuable and enriching experience that left a lasting impression. The internship experience provided me with a comprehensive understanding of the business development process and the intricacies of the ecommerce industry. I had the opportunity to work with a team of professionals who were not only knowledgeable but also passionate about staying at the forefront of industry trends. The mentorship and guidance I received from my colleagues and supervisors were instrumental in my professional growth. 

Caroline Mitchem: business development intern in the U.S.

Throughout my internship at Signifyd, I was given the opportunity to work on various projects that showed me how to become a successful business development representative. With the amazing support from the BDR and sales teams I learned how to communicate directly with clients, research accounts effectively, create value propositions and prospect new contacts.

Signifyd helped me develop networking and communication skills beyond what I ever could have imagined. I was able to work on account maps, prospecting, cold calling, emailing, company profiles, account vetting, a vertical cheat sheet and an analysis of a sales and marketing campaign that we worked on with our partners at Adobe. While this internship was fully remote, I never felt alone. I always felt supported by and connected to everyone I was working with.

A culture of teamwork promotes interns’ success

Having the ability to network with numerous different people from various cross-functional teams allowed me to learn about Signifyd and how different departments operate within the company. The environment that managers and upper-level executives have created within Signifyd is one of support, diversity, respect, and openness. Thanks to the support and training from the entire BDR team at Signifyd, I was able to create a significant outbound opportunity within my first week of contacting leads. I left this summer with new communication, time-management, professional and sales skills due to the amazing people at Signifyd who helped me grow into a confident, knowledgeable intern.   

Are you ready to write your Signifyd story?

Signifyd’s interns serve as inspiring testimonials of the value that interns can bring to a company. They are not just temporary hires, but integral contributors who gain invaluable experience and collaborate on real-world projects. Their journeys reflect Signifyd’s dedication to fostering a culture of learning, growth and support. Interns are the future of an organization and their potential knows no bounds. If you are interested in becoming one of our interns, be sure to check out Signifyd’s careers page on a regular basis to apply!

Interested in joining Signifyd?

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One prime example is Mike Demmert, who sought a significant career shift after several years in sales leadership at Signifyd. For more than a year now, he has served as head of revenue enablement while enjoying tremendous success. 

Mike Demmert

It was not exactly how Demmert envisioned his career before joining Signifyd in 2019. At that time he had over 15 years of experience in sales and sales leadership and he fancied himself as a career sales leader. He had worked in various sales roles, including field sales, where he engaged in regular face-to-face and virtual interactions with clients. His career was shaped significantly by his tenure at influential companies such as Xerox, NetSuite and Oracle. He deeply enjoyed coaching teams on building relationships and driving a strong sales process. 

How Signifyd promotes internal mobility

Demmert says he was drawn to Signifyd four years ago by the company’s growth stage. Recognizing how his strengths aligned with Signifyd’s company values, he believed he could contribute to Signifyd’s scaling efforts in building and growing effective sales teams. For a little over three years, he led a commercial sales team as a founding member of our Denver office. It was there that he found himself enjoying his interactions with other parts of the business. When an opening for an enablement leadership position arose, he was encouraged to apply by the sales leadership team that admired his demonstrated strengths in a process-driven, scalable approach to educating and up-leveling teams.

Self-education can propel internal mobility

Of course, any time a new function is born at a company, prior experience tends to be the first hiring criteria. But Signifyd’s culture embraces a willingness to take risks on its people and invest in their career aspirations, and Demmert’s situation was no different. The hiring manager for the sales enablement role felt confident that with the right support, Demmert could translate his deep sales knowledge into the development of a best-in-breed enablement program. And once he landed the role, he says he felt well-supported and encouraged by his leaders, who provided him with learning materials and insights. Additionally, he gleaned insights into his new role from his personal network, all of which helped him scale the steep learning curve and embrace the opportunity for growth. 

“It’s been so incredible to see Mike transition into this new role and build a thoughtful enablement program for our revenue teams.” says Alex Goodman, a Signifyd HR business partner. “A great example of his impact has been in developing the sales new-hire onboarding, which features curated content about Signifyd’s product and our sales cycle, specific goals for new hires or team members transitioning into sales, and a list of team members to meet with internally regarding relevant topics. Since he’s rolled out this programming, Mike and I have been able to share feedback about new hire experiences to ensure an incoming hire has a great onboarding experience and is able to confidently jump into their role.” 

Previous experience can provide a springboard to achieving new opportunities

In the new role, Demmert’s day-to-day activities have a definite crossover with his previous position. The sense of urgency he developed in sales to reach revenue targets has translated well to ensuring he completes project deliverables within specific timeframes. However, he has had to develop many new skills, including that of developing scalable programs and assets that aid the growth and success of others. 

“Each day I’m engaged in things like brainstorming training and enablement needs with the leadership team, crowdsourcing asset development to understand and develop best practices, and connecting with the revenue-generating teams personally to understand learning gaps and demands,” Demmert says. 

Demmert’s role is like that of a maestro conducting an orchestra. He brings together information from various parts of the company and creates a cohesive end result.

Building on old and creating new relationships is a key to success

“As the head of revenue enablement, Demmert supports our go-to-market teams with the ability to effectively market and sell our products, tools and systems,” Goodman explains  “That partnership extends across the company as he gathers information on new initiatives and enablement opportunities and develops meaningful content for the Signifyd team.  Through this process, he’s built strong relationships and helped bring timely content for the team to be successful as they navigate through new processes and experiences.”  

Demmert takes immense pride in synthesizing knowledge, producing high-quality assets, and delivering them to a receptive audience.

 “What I loved about sales was getting to a level of awareness where I felt like I could anticipate moves and interactions with customers before they happened,” he says. “It was like seeing the full chessboard all at once instead of being handed one card at a time. This broader perspective has helped me develop learning and development programs that hopefully impact my audience in a comprehensive way. I enjoy thinking through the nuances and implications of how a learning experience would go and building around that.”

Demmert translated past experience into a future vision 

Another difference in his roles has been the shift from directly serving external customers to now supporting and adding value to internal Signifyd employees as his customer base.

“Now I work to add value to those Signifyers who are interacting with our prospects and customers every day,” Demmert says. “They have a hard job and if I can help them ramp quicker, be more effective in the field, and drive long-term customer value, we all win.” 

Promoting upward mobility is good for individuals and for organizations

Mike’s road from regional sales director to the head of revenue enablement at Signifyd showcases the potential value that internal mobility can bring, both to people and the organization as a whole. An employee is able to realize a unique opportunity for desired career growth, which drives engagement, loyalty and retention.

Meanwhile, the company benefits from a point of view steeped in specific organizational context and relationships, which drives more holistic and efficient solutions. Demmert’s journey at Signifyd serves as a reminder for companies and professionals alike to embrace these unique opportunities for growth to both of their benefit. 

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“Signifyd always stuck in my head after I talked to them,” said Ashley Ray, a growth account executive who was not a match for the first position she interviewed for at Signifyd. “The people were warm and welcoming – it felt real.”

And six months later, in June 2022, she joined Signifyd in her current sales role.

Like Ray, a number of employees and candidates have found that even when they thought their experience with Signifyd was over, the company’s culture and business model drew them back. 

Colin McCloskey

“Signifyd is not an easy place to walk away from,” said Colin McCloskey, risk intelligence manager. He joined Signifyd in 2019 and left after two and a half years for an exciting-sounding opportunity at a large, more established company with former colleagues.

Five weeks later, he returned. These so-called boomerang employees and boomerang candidates point to several reasons they came back:

1. Signifyd’s positive work culture

Workers who have left and returned say the camaraderie, enthusiasm and transparency found at Signifyd are not easily replicated elsewhere.

“I missed the optimism,” said Mark Ingram, senior manager of software engineering. He joined Signifyd in January 2021 as a principal engineer and later became a manager. He left in the spring of 2022 and returned about a month later.

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The new office, about three-quarters of the way up One World Trade Center, features stunning views through ample floor-to-ceiling windows and reveals a mesmerizing street scene in miniature below. It will serve as a workplace for the company’s growing New York-area-based workforce and it will provide an executive briefing center for regular meetings with Signifyd’s expanding East Coast customer base. 

New office location reflects Signifyd’s mission

Signifyers marked the occasion with an afternoon ribbon cutting and reception. In brief remarks, executives were admirably restrained when it came to wordplay focused on Signifyd reaching new heights, being on top of the world, etc.

Signifyd’s relocated office is on the 71st floor of the World Trade Center

Instead, they focused on how the office in the Western Hemisphere’s tallest building was a physical manifestation both of Signifyer’s collective accomplishments and of its relationship with and promise to its customers. 

After the severed red ribbon fluttered to the ground, Chief People Officer Emily Mikailli noted that Signifyd isn’t known for ostentation. But, she added, moving into the iconic address wasn’t about putting on a show. It was about staying close to customers and securing a tangible reminder that employees’ hard work had paid off —  and would continue to pay off.

One World Trade Center office is a destination

“We’ve always tried to stay humble ourselves so I think the fact that we held off on this kind of visible embodiment of our success is really telling,” Mikailli said. “But it feels really good for our employees and our customers to see the visible manifestation of all the hard work that we’ve done. For us, it’s not just about the employees here in New York City, but also our employees from around the world who are going to come here. It’s a destination. They’ll want to gather here.”

 The World Trade Center office will also serve as an executive briefing center — a place where representatives from Signifyd’s customers can come to ask questions, make suggestions and learn about how Signifyd is propelling their businesses today and what more Signifyd can do for them in the future. In that respect, the office’s location is no accident.

“This office is at the heart of the financial center for the world,” Signifyd Chief Customer Officer J. Bennett said, standing in front of a bank of windows that offered a sweeping view up the Hudson River and over the rest of Manhattan to the north. “Signifyd aspires to be the fabric between financial institutions, retailers and consumers.”  

New York office rests at the intersection of finance and commerce

The office location serves as a physical reminder of that effort, too. Bennett noted that merchants and financial institutions — payment services providers, issuing banks, acquiring banks and others — are vitally linked in the payment chain of online commerce. But historically, they have not had the advantage of leveraging all the data and intelligence that those players process individually.

Signifyd’s New York City office provides views of Manhattan and beyond.

Signifyd is working with payment services providers and card issuers, like Capital One and others, to provide the complete picture to dramatically increase conversions as more ecommerce orders are authorized and approved.

The office-as-briefing-center was off to a fast start, Bennett said, explaining that a global customer in the midst of an aggressive international expansion had been in before the ribbon cutting to solidify Signifyd’s role in its expansion. Yes, they were taken by the view. It’s hard not to be. 

World Trade location will include an executive briefing center

“They stayed an extra 45 minutes just to soak it in,” Bennett said. 

The relocated New York office joins the roster of Signifyd offices in San Jose, Calif.; Denver; Mexico City; São Paulo; Belfast, Northern Ireland; and London. They are the physical gathering places for a company that maintains a distributed workforce managing its own flexible model allowing employees to work from home or at the office or to combine the two. 

On Thursday afternoon, Signifyd employees crowded into the newest office on the list — 71 floors up, Champagne in hand — to celebrate the latest addition. As the ribbon went down, a cheer went up and another new era began. 

Photos by Signifyd’s Kevin Boyd, Mike Cassidy and Ryan Klocke

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To celebrate Women’s History Month, we endeavored to tap into some of that history-making energy to illuminate in a series of blog posts the expertise, wisdom and inspiration that the women of Signifyd bring to the world. Today, we conclude our series with a focus on the future — of ecommerce and of work itself — so we turned to female leaders across Signifyd’s various teams to hear from the experts.

The future of ecommerce

Ping Li, vice president of risk and chargeback operations, San Jose, California

Criminal organizations are constantly picking up their attacks. Fraud prevention solutions will be very much needed for anyone who wants to do ecommerce. I highly encourage collaboration among ecommerce merchants and the industry.

Ping Li

The fraudsters share their tools and trade data. The challenge I see is that our merchants are working in silos. Signifyd has a huge network of merchants, so when we see a fraud attack on a single merchant, we learn about it, and we can help the next merchant prevent it. If you’re working alone, it is hard. 

The ecommerce industry will continue to grow, and 10 years down the road, I’m hoping there are more collaborations among the industry and the merchants — and that merchants will rely more on experts to do the fraud protection. 

Renata Caramelo, risk intelligence manager, São Paulo, Brazil

Everything is happening so fast. Think about 10 years ago: A lot of people did not have online purchasing, or the ability to have everything in their hand with a cell phone. So, predicting where we will go in the next 10 years is hard. I would say we can expect even faster changes, faster innovation. 

Renata Caramelo

If we take one lesson from the pandemic, it should be this: We do not necessarily need stores open to buy things – we can do it mostly online. Before the pandemic, companies had problems with workers working from home, and when they needed to adapt, they did. That’s what we should expect for the future: more technology making things easier and quicker for everyone. 

The future of work

Emily Mikailli, chief people officer, San Jose, California

In the next five to 10 years, I think there will be an emphasis on how jobs are incorporated into people’s lives vs. how people make their lives work around their work. 

There has been a reckoning during COVID: It has empowered people to not be so limited in their view of what people need to do to be successful and to take more risks. When you’re going through a global pandemic, the idea of risk is very different than maybe it was a while back. We are seeing more people dropping out of the traditional workforce to take on less traditional roles or ways of making an income. People are less saddled to the idea of a 9-to-5 job. 

Emily Mikailli

If people are really unhappy with their job or really burned out, I think they would be a lot more likely to say, “I might just step away and do something radically different.”

Ten to 15 years ago, the job market was not good, and people were just grateful to be employed. Over the past 10 to 15 years, that has shifted: Employees have a lot of power, and companies have responded with greater flexibility. 

Even if we continue on this path toward a recession, although that does put a little more power back in the hands of employers, it also puts pressure on employers to make sure they’re making really cost-effective decisions. The move to remote work was heavily influenced by COVID, but now most companies are maintaining some flavor of that. Remote work is usually cheaper: Maintaining an office presence is inefficient, and employees spend time commuting when they could have been either at work or filling their cup with things that bring them joy and make them invigorated for work.

The economy does drive a bit of the power dynamic between employees and employers. But the fact that people are becoming more open-minded about what it looks like to be successful is shifting some power away from employers. 

Illustration by Getty Images, photos courtesy of Signifyd

Interested in an organization that looks to the future? Come join us. 

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To celebrate Women’s History Month, we endeavored to tap into some of that history-making energy to illuminate in a series of blog posts the expertise, wisdom and inspiration that the women of Signifyd bring to the world. Our third installment focuses on opportunity — including how to expand opportunities for women in tech — so we turned to female leaders across Signifyd’s various teams to hear from the experts.

Amal Ahmed, director of global financial services and EMEA marketing, London, England

For me, it’s very important to try to open doors for women who look like me. STEM has always been seen as a nerdy thing that guys like to do. People like me are a statement that it isn’t — there are opportunities there; you just have to pursue them. 

Amal Ahmed

Leaders who look like me

When I’m deciding whether to move to a particular company, part of my decision is looking at their leadership and seeing if there is anyone who looks like me. My previous jobs were in fintech, which is very much a “lad culture.” Working in ecommerce for the past few years, it’s a lot more female-friendly. But there is still a way to go.

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As Women’s History Month continues, we endeavored to tap into some of that history-making energy to illuminate in a series of blog posts the expertise, wisdom and inspiration that the women of Signifyd bring to the world. In this second installment,  our focus is on balancing work and the rest of life — how to find it, how you define it, how to keep it — so we turned to female leaders across Signifyd’s various teams to hear from the experts.

Boundaries can set you free

Renata Caramelo, risk intelligence manager, São Paulo, Brazil

Work/life balance has looked different for me at different times of my career. I have a teenage daughter, and I have worked since she was a year and a half old. Balancing her needs with my work has always been very important to me. She is the most important part of my life — but I also really like to work. 

Renata Caramelo

I have always tried to balance and give both my daughter and my job the best that I have. It has gotten easier as she has gotten older and as I have learned to set boundaries. I am a bit of a workaholic, and it took a while for me to get comfortable saying, for example, that I needed to take my daughter to a doctor’s appointment. Working for a supportive company is important, but I also needed to find in myself the confidence to say no. 

Setting boundaries is even more critical when you work at home like I do. My grandmother used to say that most women have two jobs: at home with the kids, and also in the workplace. When both of them are in the same place, you need to be more careful about this balance. I love working from home, but it is quite easy to become overwhelmed. You don’t need to be at the office to be working, so sometimes you get stuck in this loop of work and work and work. 

Figure out what balance is for you

Emily Mikailli, chief people officer, San Jose, California 

Balancing work and life is very situational and personal. When I had young children, I felt compelled to be around them as much as possible. That forced me to be as efficient as possible at work — I didn’t have the luxury of working all weekend long. Now I do work more in the evenings, and I don’t mind that.

The definition of balance is: You’re energized about your work, and you feel like you’re stepping away from it enough to rest and come back to it with enthusiasm, clarity and a desire to solve problems. This will not look the same for everyone. Are you getting what you need to be energized by your work? If you’re not, you need to reflect and do something differently. 

One point to consider is reactive work. You don’t really get work done until you have some uninterrupted time for deep thought. If someone is struggling with work/life balance, they need to figure out how to delegate, automate, and otherwise do as much as they can to get reactive escalations off their plate. I would encourage people to think about how they can block their time, take things off their plate, reduce unnecessary meetings. It’s not a benefit to an employer or an employee for them to be really, really busy – it’s actually a benefit for them to not be busy. People aren’t going to waste that extra time – they’re going to use it to do research and make the bigger decisions that will help the company progress.

The balance isn’t a steady state

Amal Ahmed, director of global financial services and EMEA marketing, London, England

Amal Ahmed

I’m a single parent with a 15-year-old. Early on in my career, a lot of my decisions were not necessarily based on whether I liked the job, but on whether I could have work/life balance — meaning, could I get to childcare in the mornings and evenings? A lot of my decisions were based on being a mum first, as opposed to providing me with the career progression I was seeking.

A lot of my employers were very flexible and understanding. But when you have a child and you’re trying to progress through the career ladder, you do have these moments where you can’t give everything to one aspect of your life. So early on in my career, I did focus more on being a mum. Now my child is more grown up, so I am able to pursue more opportunities.

Balance is about being present

Rejane Leite, software engineering manager, Belfast, Northern Ireland

For me, work/life balance is more of a mental balance. It’s not something where you can say, “50% of my time is work and 50% of my time is my personal life.”

Rejane Leite

If sometimes you end up spending a little bit more time on work, studying a subject or going deeper into a topic, that doesn’t mean you’re not having work/life balance — it means that you’re passionate about something and want to get more information about it. But it also means that when I spend time with my family and friends, I have quality time with them – I’m not thinking about work at all. For me, work/life balance is having the ability to be concentrated and focused on the time I’m spending at work or with friends and family.

Featured illustration by Getting Images

Looking to join a team that values balancing work and the rest of life? Come join us.

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As Women’s History Month gets underway, we endeavored to tap into some of that history-making energy to illuminate in a series of blog posts the expertise, wisdom and inspiration that the women of Signifyd bring to the world. Today, our focus is on leadership — what it takes, how to be exceptional at it, facing the challenges — so we turned to female leaders across Signifyd’s various teams to hear from the experts.

Find those who want to see you succeed — and ask for help

Ping Li, vice president of risk and chargeback operations, San Jose, California

Trust yourself. I’ve helped a lot of women grow into their roles, and I’ve seen a lot of self-doubt. Sometimes we limit our own growth by setting a box around ourselves. We have to free ourselves from that and allow ourselves to build that confidence and grow.

Ping Li

For example, if you’re a manager who is managing just a few people and then you’re given the opportunity to manage a large team, that leap in responsibilities can be very daunting. When you are managing a few people, you can spend lots of individual time with them. Managing a large team – learning to lead the leaders and delegate — is a very different challenge. 

Seek help if you need it. A lot of times, women just keep our challenges to ourselves and say, “I’m going to make it work.” At some point, if you’re hitting a brick wall, you shouldn’t be afraid to seek help.

Be in touch with yourselves in order to lead others

Rejane Leite, software engineering manager, Belfast, Northern Ireland

I decided to go into management rather than continuing on the individual contributor track because I’m fulfilled by seeing other people be successful in their careers.

The main thing I’ve learned is that as leaders, we are here to serve those around us, and we need to take care of ourselves first, before we take care of other people. It’s important to understand your identity: who you are, your strengths and weaknesses, in order to help other people. You need to acknowledge what you’re good at and what you can do in order to serve others.

Managing a team is about managing individuals

Renata Caramelo, risk intelligence manager, São Paulo, Brazil

Renata Caramelo

It’s important to adapt your management style to your team. That’s not as easy as it seems, of course, but it’s one of the most important aspects of leadership. For example, there are those who don’t like someone asking them a lot of questions — they prefer to be given a task and then to work on it by themselves. But others prefer to have someone checking in with them every day to feel supported.

Think like a CEO

Emily Mikailli, chief people officer, San Jose, California

I’ve learned that the best leaders are thinking like a CEO all the time. You cannot be a truly excellent leader if you’re only thinking narrowly about your function. You really need to take time to expose yourself to the rest of the business.

For example, I oversee people operations at Signifyd, but I’ve been able to progress my contributions and value by exposing myself to every element of the business and then driving my people strategy to align with what the top business priorities are. 

Emily Mikailli

I see that in all the best leaders I have worked with: Your head of sales, for example, should be making valuable contributions on the product side. Your CFO will be able to opine on your marketing and brand strategy. Everyone is sharing responsibility for culture. Each leader defines the strategy for their domain, but the strategy can’t be siloed. 

This is something that’s hard for a growing leader – it’s hard to find time to step out and say, “I’m going to find time to understand this new product area we’re going into.” But until I do that, I’m not going to be able to add real value regarding how we structure the organization or hire for a particular function. This is a form of creativity: where you marry your company’s specific needs with the best ways of doing things. I’m not coming up with something totally new. Instead, I can understand what’s best in class, but I also can deepen my business understanding of my company and see what that’s going to look like in our specific setting.

Looking to join a team that thinks deeply about leadership and nurturing leaders? Come join us.

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Signifyd can look back on 2022 as a year in which it continued to expand its footprint of fearless commerce for its customers through new products and partnerships, even as it transformed the shape of work for its employees and helped rebalance their personal and professional lives. 

It was a year in which Signifyd took the stage — figuratively and literally — to promote the notion that by adopting a holistic view of payments, the commerce protection provider was able to significantly increase order authorization and approvals, thereby providing higher conversions and revenue for its customers. 

Signifyd’s approach to commerce was endorsed by customers who turned to Signifyd in 2022 or expanded regions and storefronts protected by Signifyd. The new and growing customers include Samsung, Unilever, Hodinkee, Trocafone, Ben Bridge Jeweler, Brighton Jewelry, Staud, For Love & Lemons, SmartyPants Vitamins and Kate Somerville among others. They contributed to the expansion of both the number of merchants and the total sales on Signifyd’s Commerce Network. 

The numbers show Signifyd’s growth

And while all those are accomplishments to be proud of, the tangible effects are found in the numbers. In 2022, Signifyd: 

• Helped drive an average approval rate uplift of 9% for its Top 10 customers. 
• Saw a 67% increase in sales for merchants on its Commerce Network.
• Maintained 99.9999% uptime throughout Cyber Week.
• Evaluated over $40 million per hour in orders during Cyber Week.
• Increased the number of chargebacks it reversed by 49% year over year.

Signifyd achieved those milestones by rushing toward the future down many paths at once. At the beginning of the year, it became one of the workplace pioneers shifting to a four-day workweek — the idea being that the best results come from doing more meaningful work, not simply doing more work. The results have been promising.

In October, Signifyd launched Fearless Payments. The solution gives payment service providers a competitive edge in a time of increasing competition by boosting approval rates. Earlier in the year, the company joined forces with global payment giant FIS from Worldpay, whose Guaranteed Payments powered by Signifyd has improved merchants’ order approval rates by as much as 7%, according to FIS.

Signifyd partnered with payment providers and Google Cloud to make commerce safer

The company expanded its work with payment service providers in Europe by partnering with DNA Payments. And it launched the Signifyd app on the Stripe Marketplace, meaning merchants using Signifyd’s Chargeback Recovery solution can track their chargeback status and ask for updates on reimbursements without moving among digital sites. 

Signifyd also built relationships to provide better value to its customers and potentially the industry as a whole. In October, the company partnered with Google Cloud to provide Signifyd merchants with greater choice and the ability to turn to the best-in-breed capabilities in the market. The company recognized that more enterprises are turning to the Google Cloud Platform because it is better able to support advanced applications and data management, according to analysts.

The partnership also brings together Google Cloud’s reCaptcha Enterprise and Signifyd Commerce Protection Platform. The combination provides online brands with protection from automated attacks (bots), spam, fraudulent orders and policy abuse. 

Signifyd bulked up in LATAM

In August, Signifyd also joined with VTEX, one of Latin America’s most prominent commerce platforms, to provide a one-stop shop for both the region’s premier commerce platform expertise and its leading commerce protection. 

Meanwhile, the growth of the company’s effort to build a digital commerce community of unparalleled intelligence in the world took great strides forward. The year saw the first in-person FLOW Summit, which drew more than 250 digital commerce professionals to New York City. The day included presentations and panels diving deep into the transformation of payments, the optimal use of data, the rise of buy now, pay later, the role of NFTs, how to maximize returns, building memorable customer experiences and more.  

For the second year, Signifyd honored the 30 Most Influential in Ecommerce with an awards ceremony and a year of networking and follow-up discussions. And CEO Raj Ramanand laid out his vision for the future of ecommerce at the international Collision Conference.

Signifyd stopped an aggressive fraud ring that targeted $3.3 billion in a month

The season was also marked by an aggressive fraud ring waging an unprecedented attack against U.S. merchants. In the month of November alone, Signifyd estimates the ring, based in Southeast Asia, made off with $660 million in goods from U.S. merchants. In all, the fraudsters targeted an estimated $3.3 billion in goods across the country. 

Signifyd identified the attacks on its Commerce Network and its learning machines were able to defend against them early in the season. 

The company’s achievements — forging partnerships, increasing conversion, continuing innovation, reshaping the workplace and protecting merchants from fraud — did not go unnoticed.

In March, research and advisory firm Frost & Sullivan named Signifyd the industry leader in ecommerce fraud prevention. Leading ecommerce industry publication Digital Commerce 360 named Signifyd the leading provider of payment security and fraud prevention for the Top 1000 retailers for the second year in a row. And the Business Intelligence Group honored Signifyd’s customer success team with its 2022 Excellence in Customer Service Award. 

As impressive as 2022’s accomplishments were, they were really only a start — and a platform upon which Signifyd will build in pursuit of new heights for 2023. 

Photo by Getty Images

Want to learn more about where Signifyd is headed? Let’s talk.

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