Riskified's Growth Accelerates as Fraud Complexity Meets a Unified Platform

Riskified reported Q2 2026 earnings on August 12, and the headline was a return to robust growth. Revenue grew 22% year-over-year to $98.7 million, accelerating from 7% in Q1 and representing the fastest pace in over four years. Adjusted EBITDA jumped 84% to $3.9 million, and management raised full-year guidance for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the second time this year. The company's story is now firmly anchored in the idea that escalating fraud complexity, driven in part by agentic tools, is making its unified platform more valuable than ever.

The Fraud Environment Is the Tailwind

Eido Gal, CEO, opened the call by framing the quarter around an increasingly hostile fraud landscape: “We believe this accelerated growth is a result of an increasingly complex fraud environment, driving more demand to our expanded platform.” — Eido Gal, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer · 2026-08-12 He pointed to bad actors using fake identities, account hijacking, and increasingly sophisticated attacks across ACH, digital wallets, and tokenized transactions. The company's response has been to double down on its risk intelligence platform, which now spans account, checkout, policy, and dispute intelligence, all powered by a shared identity graph. fraud environment is central to this narrative, and identity intelligence is the key differentiator. The company highlighted that merchants are using Riskified's identity database beyond checkout to create dynamic customer risk profiles and improve customer service workflows. The AI assistant ARIA, now embedded across the platform, is gaining traction. Eido emphasized that the platform's network effects create a flywheel: signal from one part of the life cycle strengthens every other part.

Digital Finance: From Money Transfer to a Broader Category

One of the most notable changes this quarter was the renaming of the "money transfer and payments" category to "digital finance." CFO Aglika Dotcheva reported that digital finance grew approximately 180% year-over-year, driven by new merchant ramps in event contracts and gaming, plus upsell across the base. The ACH volume processed in Q2 was about 19x the value from the prior year period, underscoring the platform's ability to support non-card payment methods. This expansion is not just about revenue; it's about creating an underlying trust layer for alternative payment rails. From prior call, Eido had already signaled this direction: “The way I would view it is that merchants are looking at an increasingly complex landscape. They need to be able to support both ACH, both digital wallets, both stablecoins, obviously, credit card transactions, other smaller localized payment methods.” — Eido Gal, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer · 2026-05-13 That foresight is now showing up in the numbers. agentic tools are part of the fraud complexity, and the company's positioning is to be the guardrail for these novel transaction flows.

Marqeta, Take Rates, and the Path to Durability

A key new development was the partnership with Marqeta, announced earlier, which extends Riskified's technology to the issuer side. In Q&A, Eido explained:

The relationship with Marqeta provides us an ability to share data and risk information in a way that allows them to increase rates on behalf of our merchants? So basically, if the card was issued by Marqeta or the processor there, we would expect by several percentage points higher off rates.

This partnership is a classic example of extending beyond the checkout and into the payment ecosystem, creating a more differentiated offering for both merchants and issuers.

However, the accelerated growth comes with some cost dynamics. Aglika noted that gross margin fell to 46% due to a mix shift toward newer merchants and the ticketing vertical. She explained: “it's really a function of the higher risk profile of the new business that we added.” — Aglika Dotcheva, Chief Financial Officer · 2026-08-12 She expects cohorts to improve over time, echoing a recurring theme from prior calls: “we do expect all cohorts to kind of improve over time.” — Aglika Dotcheva, Chief Financial Officer · 2026-08-12 In March, Eido had already discussed the trade-off between growth and margin: “We feel we are in a great position to talk to over 50 publicly traded companies and really understand what their agentic commerce strategy is.” — Eido Gal, CEO · 2026-03-04 But the current quarter shows that the company is willing to accept lower initial margins to capture strategic accounts.

The take rate also fluctuated, driven by the risk profile of new business. Management emphasized that they look at take rate as an output, not a target. Net dollar retention remains around 105%, but the majority of growth is now coming from new business rather than expansion. This is a shift from earlier quarters when upsell was more of a driver. New logo acquisition was a significant contributor, with new logos across all four regions and five of the top ten headquartered outside the U.S.

While the fraud environment is likely to remain hostile, Riskified's competitive win rates above 75% and the expanding multiproduct base (up 50% YoY) suggest the platform has strong traction. The main risk is whether the lower gross margins on new cohorts will ultimately expand as promised. The company's outlook implies third-quarter revenue growth of ~27%, indicating confidence in continued momentum.