Q&A with Lerato Matsio at Trudenty
Kevin Smith, Payments Risk Director at the Payments Consulting Network[1] chatted recently with Lerato Matsio. She is the Founder and CEO at Trudenty[2].
Lerato will be speaking at Pay360 London, to be held on 25 and 26 March 2026[3]. Having previously won the Fintech Pitch Live event in 2025, Lerato will be speaking on the Innovation Stage this year and in advance of the naming of the 2026 winner.
The Fintechs' Pitch Live enables industry leaders to see and hear the most exciting fintechs compete live to show-off how they believe they can transform electronic payments, drive innovation and competition.
This chat with Lerato was an opportunity to catch-up beforehand and understand a little more about the company.
Read the full interview below.
Kevin Smith: Lerato, thank you for the opportunity to chat. Could you please provide an overview of Trudenty and your role?
Lerato Matsio: I am the Founder and CEO of Trudenty. Trudenty is building a trust layer for payments and digital commerce, unlocking shared privacy-preserving network intelligence for first-party fraud prevention. We have been around for ~3 years with a team of 10 people.
Trudenty's Trust Network enables merchants and payment providers to prevent first-party fraud by embedding first-party trust into payment flows for proactive decisioning before execution, whether that be pre-authorisation or before refund and dispute decisioning.
As payments become more real time and autonomous, trust needs to move upstream in payment decision flows and we're proud to be working with the industry's leading payments companies to bring this capability to market. The potential of our platform was recognised early when we joined Mastercard's Start Path program.[4]
KS: What merchant challenge are you aiming to address?
LM: First-party fraud is now one of the largest loss vectors across merchant payments, equating to circa US$100bn per year5.
This appears as consumers dispute legitimate transactions by abusing the chargeback mechanism or exploiting merchant refund policies to conduct return and refund fraud.
Alongside these fraud losses, the total cost borne by merchants and issuing banks includes operational costs to process and investigate disputes and claims.
KS: How does the Trudenty Trust Network operate?
LM: Trudenty embeds into the payment propositions offered by PSPs and Acquirers to merchants enabling first-party fraud prevention within the payment flow.
Unlike more traditional fraud systems, which look at individual transactions, Trudenty looks at behaviour across the network to distinguish trusted consumers from first-party fraud much earlier.
It is heavily data-driven from various sources, including identity data, merchant data, card issuer information and PSP/acquirer data.
At Trudenty, we're building a world where trust exists as a persistent network-level signal, enabling a shift from reactive mitigation to proactive authorisation.
KS: How does integration work?
LM: The Trust Network is built on federated deployments, so no data ever leaves client environments. Collaboration across the ecosystem happens through privacy preserving trust intelligence, not through sharing raw data or PII.
KS: How is the use of AI managed?
LM: We operate in regulated payments environments, so the way we use AI has to be deterministic, explainable, and auditable. This applies both to the models we build to generate shared network intelligence and to how we use AI internally across the business. It allows us to meet the governance standards banks and payment providers expect while operating with a very lean team and high leverage.
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[1] https://paymentsconsulting.com
[5] Source: Ethoca , 2024 First-party fraud infographic.
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Author: Kevin Smith, Payments Risk Director, London, Payments Consulting Network
Kevin has over 30 years' experience in the retail management, financial services and payments industries. With 17 years at Visa globally he has a proven track record in developing and executing innovative and practical business strategy, product development and service definition in card acceptance and acquiring. With both marketing and risk management backgrounds, he brings a pragmatic approach to business development.
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Payments Consulting Network is a media partner of Pay360 2026 happening on 25 – 26 March 2026 at Hall S6, Excel, London.
👉 Secure your place today: https://pay360event.com/
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