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Dublin's ZeroRisk secured $10M in Series A funding led by MiddleGame Ventures to scale its merchant cyber-risk platform, already deployed by Bank of America and Checkout.com.
- ZeroRisk raised $10M in a Series A led by MiddleGame Ventures, with existing backer Elkstone also participating.
- The platform already serves Bank of America, Global Payments, Checkout.com, and Trust Payments across their merchant portfolios.
- The company projects revenue will triple in 2026 as contracted programmes move into deployment rather than from new sales alone.
Lead
Dublin cybersecurity firm ZeroRisk closed a $10 million Series A round on September 9, 2026, led by MiddleGame Ventures, with continued participation from existing investor Elkstone. Founded in 2023, the company gives acquiring banks and payment service providers a consolidated, real-time view of cyber risk across their entire merchant bases. The capital will go toward international expansion, further product development, and the operational headcount required to deploy its platform at scale.
What Does ZeroRisk Actually Do?
ZeroRisk sits between the bank and its merchants, giving financial institutions the kind of continuous visibility that annual PCI compliance checks cannot provide. Traditional merchant cyber programmes centred on once-a-year snapshots - a process that tells institutions little about day-to-day exposures. ZeroRisk replaces that model with live monitoring across threats including credential theft, website vulnerabilities, connected-device risks, and merchant recovery capacity after an incident.
The platform combines compliance management, risk scoring, guided remediation, and merchant education into a single interface. Banks and processors see risk across a full portfolio rather than merchant by merchant, which matters when a mid-size acquirer may carry hundreds of thousands of merchants across multiple industries.
Bank of America, Global Payments, Checkout.com, and Trust Payments all use the product. That client roster is notable for a three-year-old company and suggests the enterprise sales cycle - notoriously slow in financial services - moved faster than the sector norm.
Why Are Banks Paying Attention to Merchant Cyber Risk Now?
Liability is shifting. Acquiring banks bear direct financial exposure when a merchant suffers a breach, through chargebacks, card scheme fines, and damage to institutional relationships. Regulators across the EU and the US have sharpened their scrutiny of third-party risk in payments infrastructure. A compromised merchant is no longer only the merchant's problem.
The risk vectors small businesses face have also expanded well beyond what a PCI questionnaire addresses. Credential stuffing attacks, supply-chain compromises embedded in e-commerce plugins, and ransomware targeting point-of-sale systems all fall outside the traditional compliance framework. Continuous tooling is the only practical way to cover the gap.
ZeroRisk competes for a space that larger security vendors have largely passed over. Enterprise cybersecurity firms focus on the banks themselves rather than the downstream merchant ecosystem. That omission created room for specialists, and the company's traction with Tier 1 names suggests it identified a real demand rather than a projected one.
What Does the $10M Buy, and Is It Enough?
The round is modest by recent fintech standards, which reads as either capital discipline or a constrained raise - the valuation was not disclosed, making it difficult to judge. Revenue projections of 3x growth in 2026 are driven primarily by contracted programmes entering deployment, not new customer acquisition. If that trajectory holds, the company should reach a revenue base that supports a more substantial Series B within the next 18 to 24 months.
The geographic expansion plan will test the thesis in practice. The US is already anchored through an Atlanta office and a marquee banking client. European markets are the immediate next step, helped by Dublin's regulatory proximity to the EU financial infrastructure. Asia-Pacific would require a longer runway and a different commercial playbook.
MiddleGame Ventures has a fintech and financial infrastructure focus, which makes it a credible lead for a company selling into banks and payment processors. Elkstone's continued involvement reflects the Dublin startup ecosystem's growing appetite for enterprise cybersecurity as a viable export.
Outlook
ZeroRisk enters its growth phase with a differentiated position and a client list that few three-year-old security companies can match. Revenue growing from contracted work rather than from unsecured pipeline gives the company a degree of predictability that typically commands a higher multiple at the next round. The central test is deployment speed - integrating a compliance and monitoring platform across large merchant portfolios requires navigating legacy bank infrastructure, and that rarely moves on a startup's timeline. Execution against existing contracts over the next 12 months will determine whether the $10M is a bridge or a stumble.
