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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Fraud and risk platform DataVisor launched its new AI Co-Pilot solution to enhance real-time fraud defense.
AI Co-Pilot includes AI-automated rule tuning, feature generation and automated debugging, and improved explainability among its features.
DataVisor made its Finovate debut last month at FinovateFall in New York.
Less than a month after making its Finovate debut at FinovateFall, fraud and risk platform DataVisor has launchedAI Co-Pilot. The new offering is a generative AI-facilitated fraud solution designed to catch fraud 20x faster than traditional methods.
AI Co-Pilot helps financial institutions detect fraud in real-time while at the same time reducing the number of false positives. This enables financial institutions to provide effective fraud defense without compromising the user experience with excessive friction.
DataVisor co-founder and CEO Yinglian Xie noted that innovation in the payment space required innovation in the fraud prevention space, as well. With bank transfer and payment fraud losses in the U.S. topping $1.58 billion last year, concerns over fraud risks can serve as an impediment to many financial institutions – especially smaller FIs and credit unions – when it comes to embracing instant payments and other new services that their customers and members want.
“Built on groundbreaking Generative AI technology, DataVisor’s AI Co-Pilot gives financial institutions better intelligence and automation for more effective fraud detection and prevention,” Xie said. “This innovative solution is more accurate, reacts to fraud trends much faster, and improves user experiences and customer support.”
Among the new capabilities delivered by DataVisor’s AI Co-Pilot are AI-automated rule tuning to accelerate the fraud response and improve accuracy, feature generation and automated debugging, and improved explainability to ensure transparency.
“(AI Co-Pilot) considerably reduces the need for analyst resources,” Xie added. “This advancement signifies a pivotal step toward enhanced security and efficiency across the industry.”
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Mountain View, California, DataVisor demoed its fraud and risk platform at FinovateFall last month. At the event, DataVisor’s Ryan Nichols and Kevin McWey showed how the technology’s rules engine, device intelligence, decision engine, and case management combine to enhance fraud detection and minimize losses.
DataVisor has raised more than $94 million in funding. The company includes CMFG Ventures and NewView Capital among its investors. Last month, DataVisor introduced new Chief Revenue Officer Kevin McWey. In July, the company announced that it had partnered with cyber and fraud threat intelligence specialist Q6 Cyber.
This week’s edition of 5 Tales from the Crypto features a pair of stories from cryptocurrency exchange Binance, concerns over crypto-crime and innovations in tokenization from JP Morgan Chase, and a look at a new product, a new partnership, and a new payments license.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced that e-wallet service provider and payment gateway, SticPay will partner with Binance’s payment solution, BinancePay. BinancePay is a contactless, borderless, secure, cryptocurrency payment technology. SticPay will leverage the solution to enhance and streamline its users’ access to a range of leading cryptocurrencies.
SticPay has more than one million users and 5,000 corporate customers in 200+ countries. Courtesy of the new partnership, SticPay users will be able to fund their accounts directly via BinancePay. This will enable them to buy, sell, and send more than 70 leading cryptocurrencies faster and cheaper, which SticPay CEO Sean Park called the company’s mission. “Our users will be able to handle more cryptocurrencies, more efficiently than ever before,” Park said.
The BinancePay news comes just a few weeks after Binance announced that it would sell its Russian business to CommEx. The off-boarding process is expected to take up to a year. Binance said in a statement that the assets of Russian accountholders are safe.
Binance Chief Compliance Officer Noah Perlman noted that the company remained positive on the long-term growth of the cryptocurrency industry worldwide. Nevertheless, he added, “operating in Russia is not compatible with Binance’s compliance strategy.”
The parting of ways between Binance and Russia is total. The company noted that it will have no ongoing revenue split from the sale of its Russia business to CommEx. Binance also did not maintain any option to buy back shares in the business as part of the sale.
Sometimes the gods of cryptocurrency giveth and sometimes they taketh away. In recent weeks, JP Morgan has represented both tendencies with regards to its openness to crypto and digital assets.
A few weeks ago, we learned that JP Morgan Chase UK will ban its customers from making crypto transactions, beginning on October 16. The bank blamed a high number of fraud and scam incidents for its decision. Specifically, according to a bank spokesperson, Chase customers will be unable to buy crypto assets using a Chase debit card. They will also be unable to transfer money to a cryptocurrency account from a Chase account.
Chase is hardly the only financial institution to place limits on its customer’s ability to transact in cryptocurrencies. NatWest limited the amount of money customers can send to crypto exchanges back in March, citing concerns over “crypto criminals.” Santander Bank has also moved to prevent its customers in the U.K. from sending real-time payments to crypto exchanges.
At the same time, JP Morgan Chase has become increasingly interested in blockchain technology and the opportunities in tokenization. This week, JP Morgan unveiled its Tokenized Collateral Network (TCN). The new platform leverages blockchain technology to enable investors to use digital assets as collateral and, further, to transfer collateral ownership without having to transfer assets in the underlying ledgers.
The first public transaction using TCN involved JPMorgan and BlackRock. JP Morgan leveraged its Onyx Digital Assets tokenization platform to convert shares of a money market fund into digital tokens. Those tokens were then transferred to Barclays bank via TCN to be used as a security for an OTC derivatives exchange between JPMorgan and BlackRock.
“The tokenization of money market fund shares as collateral in clearing and margining transactions would dramatically reduce the operational friction in meeting margin calls when segments of the market face acute margin pressures,” BlackRock deputy global COO of cash management Tom McGrath said.
The hope for TCN is that the technology will reduce the number of settlement fails and provide near-instant real-time changes in ownership. TCN is live and a number of clients and transactions are reportedly on deck.
Cryptocurrency exchange Birake Exchange has turned toIDVerse to provide identity verification. The platform specializes in Masternode coins and will leverage its new relationship with IDVerse (formerly known as OCR Labs) to provide KYC and secure digital identity verification (IDV) during the onboarding process.
In a statement, the Romania-based Birake Exchange team underscored its belief in the future of cryptocurrencies and the importance of decentralization. “To mitigate fraud risks while fostering public confidence, judicious customer due diligence through identity verification has become a priority for us,” the team said.
Founded in 2018, the Birake Exchange refers to itself as a “white label crypto exchange” because it offers trading technology that enables its customers to build and brand their own crypto exchanges. The Birake Network has its own blockchain, which is powered by the Birake Coin (BIR).
As OCR Labs, IDVerse demoed its technology at FinovateAsia 2017, winning Best of Show. The company rebranded as IDVerse earlier this year.
Blockchain company Quant has introduced a new solution designed to make blockchain-based transactions more secure for financial institutions. The new offering, Overledger Authorise, helps FIs manage and integrate digital asset private keys with their own current enterprise key management systems. The technology covers the incompatibility gap between existing systems and blockchain private keys by managing the signing of blockchain transactions and key generation.
Quant founder and CEO Gilbert Verdian noted that the success of blockchain technology in banking will depend on innovations in other technologies. “We cannot unlock (blockchain technology’s) true potential without robust and future-proof solutions for cryptographic key management and transaction authorization,” Verdian said.
Overledger Authorise has been stress-tested successfully in Project Rosalind. Project Rosalind is a central bank digital currency project conducted by the Bank of England and the Bank for International Settlements.
Headquartered in London, Quant was founded in 2015.
Ripple’s Singapore-based subsidiary, Ripple Markets APAC, secured its Major Payments Institution (MPI) license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The MAS gave Ripple Markets in-principal approval earlier this year. The license paves the way for Ripple Markets APAC to issue digital payment tokens (DPTs).
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse called Singapore “pivotal” to the company’s global business. Ripple established Singapore as its Asia Pacific headquarters in 2017. Garlinghouse referred to Singapore as “one of the leading fintech and digital asset hubs striking the balance between innovation, consumer protection and responsible growth.”
A Finovate alum since debuting as OpenCoin in 2013, Ripple has grown into a major enterprise blockchain solution provider for the financial services industry. Earlier this year, Ripple won a court ruling that its native cryptocurrency, XRP, was a digital token and “not in and of itself a ‘contract,’. As such, the court rules that Ripple was not guilty of selling unregistered securities – as accused by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2020.
Data intelligence startup Curinos announced a new strategic collaboration with mortgage capital markets technology company Polly.
Polly will integrate Curinos’ market pricing data into its Product and Pricing Engine (PPE).
Curinos made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring.
Data intelligence startup Curinos has forged a new partnership with Polly, a company that provides mortgage capital markets technology. Polly will integrate Curinos’ market pricing data into its Product and Pricing Engine (PPE) to produce what both companies are calling the largest competitive dataset gathered from industry third parties.
“Our partnership will enable clients to seamlessly analyze their market position and support effective margin decisions without leaving their pricing engine,” Curinos EVP of Real Estate and Consumer Lending Brandonn Dukes explained. “These benefits will allow users to establish proactive margin management processes and remain competitive in any market environment.”
A product of the combination of Novantas and Informa’s FBX business, Curinos offers technology that helps financial institutions make better, faster, and more profitable data-driven decisions. Curinos’ technology facilitates access to comprehensive datasets and analytics, smart technologies, and connected behavioral insights, and can be applied across financial services ranging from deposits to lending.
A new Finovate alum, Curinos made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring. At the conference, the company demonstrated its Amplero Personalization Optimizer. Designed for high-impact use cases, the technology leverages innovations in marketing automation to deliver hyper-personalized omnichannel experiences in minutes, rather than months. Founded in 2021, Curinos also forged a partnership earlier this year with customer intelligence technology and service provider Touchpoint Group.
Polly Chief Revenue Officer Parvesh Sahi highlighted the way the new integration will help lenders, as well as enable Polly to accelerate its own efforts with regards to business intelligence. “Not only does this collaboration enable lenders to optimize their operations and maximize profitability with new data and services today, but it also lays the groundwork for Polly’s long-term data and analytics strategy,” Sahi said.
Founded in 2019, Polly helps banks, credit unions, and mortgage lenders automate and optimize the entire capital markets value chain. From rate lock to loan sale and delivery, Polly offers a vertically integrated capital markets solution that helps lenders scale their mortgage operations. The company is based in San Francisco, California. Adam Carmel is founder and CEO.
A new survey from identity verification platform Trulioo reveals that nearly 80% of responding organizations have suffered from business identity theft. Business identity theft involves defrauding, extorting, or stealing money from a company. The data comes from Trulioo’s Global Know Your Business (KYB) Survey, conducted last month. The review included responses from 705 professionals in banking, payments, e-commerce, trading, health care, and the public sector.
“Our global KYB survey shows that 79% of companies have been affected by business identity theft,” Trulioo Chief Product Officer Michael Ramsbacker said. “Fraudsters all too often find an open door by using stolen business identities.”
In addition to the high number of companies reporting experience with business identity theft, the survey noted that more than a third of those responding (34%) said that they were not happy with their current business verification vendor. These respondents cited issues with data accuracy, international coverage, and meeting compliance regulations as the major challenges to effective and efficient business verification.
To this end, Ramsbacker underscored that Trulioo’s approach helps businesses deal with this specific attack vector by enabling companies to conduct business verification as part of the onboarding process. “(Our) platform allows our customers to deploy onboarding workflows that verify the user submitting the business information is affiliated with the business,” Ramsbacker explained. “Trulioo provides multilayered business verification and global data sources, all through one platform, to help organizations thwart those fraud threats and achieve compliance in countries around the world.”
More than 50% of survey respondents came from businesses reporting annual sales of more than $500 million. A majority of the survey respondents reported verifying more than 100 businesses a month. The survey respondents were geographically diverse, hailing from North America, Central and South America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
A Finovate alum since 2014, Trulioo won Best of Show for its demo at FinovateEurope last year. The company returned to the Finovate stage this March, showing how its global identity platform provided a comprehensive suite of services to verify both individuals and businesses. More recently, Trulioo launched its Advanced Global Person Match Services with Intelligent Routing offering. This solution adds to the capabilities of Truiloo’s Workflow Studio, a component of the company’s identity platform.
“The Trulioo breakthrough approach eliminates the need for redundant, complex multivendor verification systems,” Ramsbacker explained, “enabling organizations to quickly and intelligently onboard customers and gain a competitive advantage.”
Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Trulioo provides real-time identity verification of more than five billion people and 700 million businesses around the world. Founded in 2011, the company has raised more than $474 million in funding from investors including Goldman Sachs and Blumberg Capital. Steve Munford is CEO.
Identity verification, risk assessment, and compliance solutions company Jumio has announced an expanded strategic partnership with NextWealth.
A data services provider, NextWealth will provide identity verification services and manage back office operations for Jumio.
A Best of Show winner and Finovate alum since 2013, Jumio has processed more than one billion transactions spanning 200+ countries and territories.
Identity verification and compliance solutions provider Jumio has expanded its strategic partnership with data services provider NextWealth. The move comes as the risk assessment company seeks to add to its ability to combat increasingly sophisticated fraud and financial crime challenges. Via the enhanced relationship, NextWealth will provide identity verification services for Jumio. This will include taking the lead role in back office operations for Jumio as the company looks to scale its business, while providing the same level of secure service.
“Now more than ever, when our automation and quality rates have reached record levels, partnering with NextWealth enables us to focus on our core business and technology objectives and support our customers wherever they do business across the globe,” Jumio Chief Technology Officer Stuart Wells explained.
NextWealth CEO Mythily Ramesh said that the expanded partnership would “further cement our position as one of the largest, pure play, AI/ML-driven data services players in the country.” Founded in 2009, the Bengaluru, India-based company serves businesses in fintech, e-commerce, healthcare, and other verticals. With seven centers in four states, NextWealth delivers more than 300 million data transactions.
A Finovate Best of Show winner and long-time alum, Jumio has processed more than one billion transactions from 200+ countries and territories. With its Jumio KYX Platform, the Sunnyvale, California-based company offers advanced identity proofing, risk signals, and compliance tools that help businesses establish and maintain customer trust. Jumio leverages a wide variety of enabling technologies – including automation, biometrics, AI, machine learning, liveness detection, and no-code orchestration – to enable its clients to better deal with the evolving nature of financial crime.
Last month, Jumio was named a Representative Vendor in the Gartner Market Guide for Identity Verification for a fifth consecutive time. Earlier this year, the company forged partnerships with Philippines-based Java developer Exist Software Labs, and composable frontend platform company Modyo.
ieDigital, a digital banking software company based in the U.K., has acquired U.S.-based digital banking technology company Connect FSS.
Terms of the deal were not immediately available.
ieDigital made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2018.
U.K.-based digital banking software company ieDigital announced a major acquisition this week. The firm will acquire its U.S.-based counterpart, digital banking technology company, Connect FSS. Terms of the transaction were not immediately available, but the deal will make ieDigital one of the biggest digital banking software providers in the world.
The acquisition comes at the end of ieDigital’s multi-month search for a business partner that would help the company meet its growth goals, especially with regard to increasing ieDigital’s international reach. The company noted in a statement that the acquisition will bring greater scale and more resources to bear on the challenges facing business customers. The acquisition will also help accelerate innovation as teams from both companies begin to collaborate and work together to design and market new, enhanced digital solutions.
“Joining forces with Connect FSS will enable us to support a broader range of customers in different geographies that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to reach, and strengthen our technology with insight from our new colleagues in the U.S.,” ieDigital CEO Jerry Young said. Connect FSS President and CEO Grant Parry added that the partnership with a “natural next step” in Connect FSS’s evolution. “Our joint ambition is to provide excellent customer service and tailored solutions to clients,” Parry said.
For now, both ieDigital and Connect FSS will retain their brand identities in their respective markets. The firms will sit as part of a new ieDigital Group in which ieDigital’s Young will serve as CEO while Connect FSS’s Parry will serve as EVP of Strategy.
Founded in 1984, ieDigital made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2018. At the conference, the company demoed its Money Fitness solution which helps users better manage their day-to-day finances. In the years since, the company has grown into a major fintech in the U.K. financial services ecosystem. ieDigital has partnered with four of the five largest banks in the U.K., and has provided digital software solutions to more than 50 financial services businesses.
This spring, ieDigital announced that Suffolk Building Society has chosen the company as its partner for its eSavings platform. The offering will give Society members access to online savings products and will be powered by ieDigital’s Interact software. Interact is a suite of digital services that work in concert with a financial services provider’s existing technology.
Artificial intelligence has taken the technology world by storm – and fintech is no exception. But questions remain as to how AI can be best applied in the world of fintech and financial services.
I talked with Anu Sachdeva, Global Service Line & Solutions Leader at Genpact, during the FinovateFall conference last month to discuss the role of generative AI in particular in financial services. Among the topics covered were:
How banks can realize the true value of generative AI.
What use cases banks and other financial services organizations have found for generative AI.
What are the most important considerations for financial services organizations when adopting generative AI.
Payments-as-a-service platform Rainforest has raised $11.75 million in seed funding.
The round was led by Accel, and included a $3.25 million venture debt facility courtesy of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).
Rainforest helps software companies embed financial products into their solutions.
In a round led by Accel, payments-as-a-service platform Rainforest has secured $11.75 million in seed funding. The round also featured participation from Infinity Ventures, BoxGroup, The Fintech Fund, Tech Square Ventures, and Ardent Venture Partners, as well as strategic angel investors. The funding included $3.25 million in a venture debt facility courtesy of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), making the total equity raised in the round $8.5 million.
Rainforest founder and CEO Joshua Silver referenced his own experience as founder of a healthcare software company and as a payments consultant in explaining the “why” behind Rainforest. “I personally experienced the challenges and tradeoffs associated with embedded payments,” Silver said. “I recruited former colleagues and other all-star payments and SaaS veterans, and together we built Rainforest – the embedded payments platform we always wanted but didn’t exist.”
Rainforest offers an embedded payments solution that helps software platforms monetize their money flows. By building a platform specifically for software platforms, Rainforest believes that it has an edge over most payment providers that build solutions primarily for merchants. The company is able to help software platforms deal with both the risk management and compliance issues that accompany payments, while enabling them to take advantage of the growing opportunity to embed and monetize payments.
“Not every software company wants to become a full-fledged fintech,” Silver said, “but nearly all want to embed financial services.”
Rainforest’s embedded components enable companies to build payment rails to facilitate payments from providers such as Visa and Mastercard, as well as same-day ACH and Plaid verification. Rainforest supports next-day payouts, and the company anticipates adding same-day options like RTP and push-to-card soon. The company notes that its open ecosystem encourages integration with alternative payment networks, vertical-specific ledgers, and other financial service providers. “It’s a game changer,” Rainforest VP of Engineering Chris Church said, “and I’m thrilled to see platforms’ response to it.” The company notes that it secured client commitments representing more than $500 million in processing shortly after launch. In addition to financial services, Rainforest acknowledges interest in its technology from companies in verticals ranging from healthcare and professional services to logistics and construction.
Founded in 2022, Rainforest is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The company includes RoadSync, PayGround, and QuoteMachine among its clients.
BHG Financial announced a partnership with financial crime effectiveness testing company Cable.
BHG Financial will leverage Cable’s technology to enhance its own compliance programs.
Founded in 2020, Cable made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2022.
Unsecured business and personal loan specialist BHG Financial announced a partnership with Cable this week. The company will use Cable’s financial crime effectiveness platform to improve its own compliance efforts.
Headquartered in the San Francisco, California, Cable gives banks, financial services firms, fintechs, and other organizations the tools they need to enhance their compliance programs. These tools include automated risk assessments, automated assurance, quality assurance, management information, and reporting. BHG Financial’s Director of Financial Crime & BSA Officer Bryan Holloway, stated that the partnership underscored the company’s commitment to regulatory compliance by providing “advanced tooling” for “greater efficiency, visibility, and insights across our business.”
BHG Financial has established one of the largest community bank loan and product networks in the U.S. The company has originated more than $16 billion in loan solutions since its founding in 2001.
“We’re delighted to partner with BHG Financial to bolster their automated financial crime assurance and testing capabilities,” Cable CEO Natasha Vernier said. “With increasing regulatory scrutiny on banking and fintech compliance, it’s a privilege to partner with innovative companies like BHG Financial (that are) taking compliance very seriously and embracing the best tooling available to protect their business.”
Cable made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2022. At the conference, the company demonstrated its Automated Assurance solution. This technology enables banks and fintechs to automate their compliance assurance and effectiveness testing. Automated Assurance also allows organizations to discover breaches and control failures in the moment. Additionally, Cable’s technology streamlines a number of manual processes including quality control, stakeholder reporting, and record management.
Founded in 2020, the company raised $11 million in Series A funding in May of this year. Stage 2 Capital and Jump Capital participated, along with existing investor CRV. More recently, Cable announced a partnership with Grasshopper Bank, joined the Banking-as-a-Service Association, and introduced new Chief Revenue Officer Candace Sjogren. Sjogren comes to Cable after serving most recently as SVP, Global Head of Sales at crypto-as-a-service provider Zero Hash.
Want to feel good about the spread of real-time payments? Alabama-based Exchange Bank, a financial institution that has been serving customers since 1909, has turned to Pidgin to bring instant payments to its account holders.
The partnership between Pidgin and Exchange Bank will give the bank’s customers the ability to access faster payments to transfer funds between accounts, as well as pay employees, vendors, and more. Direct payment routing from financial institution to financial institution means that funds are settled and available in the recipient’s account almost immediately as soon as the transaction is completed.
“Banking has changed drastically since 1909, but our long-standing history is a testament to our bank’s dedication to keeping up with our customer’s needs,” Exchange Bank chairman and CEO Ricky Ray said. Ray referred to the partnership with Pidgin as an example of the bank’s ability to evolve and offer new ways to help its customers “thrive financially.”
Added Pidgin founder and CEO Abhishek Veeraghanta: “Today’s customers are looking for instant payment options to gain more flexibility and control over their transactions. We look forward to empowering Exchange Bank and their customers with more efficient payment options.”
Pidgin leverages its status as a central connection point to the Federal Reserve’s FedNow Service as well as faster payment networks such as The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payment Network. Founded in 2022, the company made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall. At the conference, Pidgin demoed its faster payments ecosystem, which enables FIs to send and receive faster payments almost instantly, while providing greater security compared to virtual wallet alternatives.
Pidgin founder and CEO Abhishek Veeraghanta demoing the company’s faster payments technology at FinovateFall 2022.
Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Pidgin was among the first fintechs to secure certification for the FedNow instant payments service launched by the Federal Reserve earlier this year. Also this year, Pidgin announced a new partnership with U.S. Century Bank, a Miami-based institution with more than $2.1 billion in assets. The bank will leverage its new relationship with Pidgin to provide instant payments to its growing customer base of small business owners, professionals, and entrepreneurs based in south Florida.
Other partnerships forged this year by Pidgin include the company’s work with fraud and compliance platform Effectiv (also a Finovate alum) and Community Bankers’ Bank.
AI digital workforce solution provider for banks and FIs, WorkFusion unveiled its latest digital worker, an AI transaction monitoring investigator called Isaac.
Isaac manages transaction monitoring alerts. The technology routes alerts to human investigators or closes them if they are determined to be non-suspicious.
WorkFusion demoed its technology at FinovateFall in 2014.
WorkFusion, an AI digital workforce solution provider for FIs, has launched its latest digital worker, an AI Transaction Monitoring Investigator called Isaac. The new offering leverages machine learning to enhance transaction monitoring alert management. By orchestrating alerts – working first-level alerts, auto-escalating alerts that might require investigation, and auto-closing non-suspicious alerts, Isaac enables anti-fraud analysts to focus on the more complex, higher risk fraud incidents.
“Our new AI Digital Worker, Isaac, reduces the alert review burden by helping to identify which alerts need to be escalated for further review and auto-closes those that it deems as non-suspicious,” WorkFusion VP of Financial Crime Art Mueller said. “Because Isaac creates an easy-to-read dossier with a supporting narrative and documentation, analysts move from authors of reports to editors – saving their time to work on higher-risk and higher value investigations.”
Isaac helps FIs manage transaction monitoring alerts. The technology automates transaction monitoring alert reviews and appropriately routes them to a human investigator, when necessary. If Isaac determines the alerts are not suspicious, it automatically closes them. Additionally, Isaac creates a dossier for each decision with a human-readable justification and supporting documentation. The technology is particularly helpful with transaction monitoring instances that produce a large number of alerts. These scenarios can include structuring, excessive fund transfers, unexpected account activity, as well as other high-risk factors. Note that Isaac is not a transaction monitoring tool itself, and does not initiate alerts on its own.
Headquartered in 2010 and founded in New York, WorkFusion demoed its Active-Learning Automation solution at FinovateFall 2014. Today, the company offers an AI-powered digital workforce that supports teams in operations such as anti-money laundering (AML), sanctions, customer onboarding, Know Your Customer (KYC), and customer service. WorkFusion’s solutions are not bots. Instead, the company’s digital workers leverage a combination of process knowledge and technologies – including AI, machine learning, intelligent document processing, and robotic process automation (RPA) – in order to complete jobs rather than merely rule-based tasks.
This summer the Bank of Asia announced that it would deploy WorkFusion’s AI Digital Worker, Evelyn, as part of its enhanced client onboarding experience. Evelyn provides negative news screening, a component of the KYC process that is especially helpful in combating money laundering, as WorkFusion CEO Adam Famularo explained.
“Adverse media monitoring is one of the most effective tools banks and financial institutions have to protect against money laundering,” Famularo said. “However, there are many news articles, most of which are irrelevant false positive, which consume a lot of time. By automating this laborious task, Bank of Asia will reduce its new client onboarding time and ensure a more positive customer experience.”
Lithuania is one of those countries that punches above its weight in terms of fintech innovation. With a population of less than three million, the country boasts more than 260 fintech companies. It is the largest fintech hub in the EU when it comes to licensed companies. These fintechs, numbering nearly 150, represent the majority of fintechs in the country and are licensed e-money institutions, payment institutions, or specialized banks.
Some of the more widely known Lithuanian fintechs include account-to-account infrastructure company kevin and e-money institution Paysera. Revolut Bank is licensed and regulated by the Bank of Lithuania, the country’s central bank.
Given the country’s strength as a fintech hub, it is no surprise that Lithuania holds its own on the regtech front as well. Two of the country’s more active regtechs are AMLYZE, an automated transaction monitoring and risk assessment solution provider that raised $1 million in funding back in May, and identity verification and fraud prevention company iDenfy. Both companies made significant partnership announcements in recent days.
Lithuanian identity verification and fraud prevention company iDenfy will help ECNG Digital, a virtual currency exchange and payment services firm, enhance its onboarding process. The partnership will enable ECNG Digital to deploy a variety of customized identity verification procedures via a KYC solution that combines high accuracy and an optimized user experience. These procedures range from validating government-issued identification documents to live selfie detection to cross-referencing databases. Additionally, iDenfy’s in-house KYC specialists will provide real-time verifications to enhance the accuracy of the technology.
“In the realm of virtual currency exchange and payment services, the real challenge lies in balancing fraud prevention with swift identity verification,” iDenfy CEO Domantas Ciulde said. “Our mission is to guide ECNG Digital on this path, ensuring precision while accelerating understanding.”
ECNG Digital is not the only company turning to iDenfy for identity verification. German online marketplace Quoka and iDenfy also have announced a partnership this week. iDenfy’s verification technology will help Quoka manage its sizable volume of ID verifications, leveraging both biometrics and document recognition.
Headquartered in Kaunas, Lithuania, iDenfy was founded in 2017.
Lithuanian credit union group KREDA has selected Lithuanian regtech AMLYZ as its compliance software partner. The organization is one of the largest credit union organizations in the country and has 14 member institutions. KREDA will leverage AMLYZE’s transaction monitoring technology as part of a modernization of its compliance standards. The technology will also help KREDA with customer risk assessment, case management, and sanctions screening.
AMLYZE CEO and co-founder Gabrielius Bilkštys said the partnership represented the company’s “commitment to helping organizations like KREDA navigate the complex current regulatory landscape, detect financial crime, and ensure the highest standards of compliance.” Founded in 2018, KREDA has $528 million (€0.5 billion) in assets under management.
AMLYZE also recently announced that it was working with Estonian core banking provider Tuum. The two firms have forged a strategic partnership that will give banks and other financial institutions access to “out-of-the-box” compliance that is integrated into Tuum’s core banking, payments, and card modules. Tuum VP of Global Strategic Partnerships Jean Souto said that the collaboration would allow “banks and financial institutions to free themselves from the burden of legacy applications so they can respond quickly to market challenges and new opportunities whilst ensuring compliance with increasingly evolving stringent regulations.”
Founded in 2019, AMLYZE is headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Issuer-processor Paymentology teamed up with Colombia-based expense management firm Tuily to bring Apple Pay to the company’s SME customers.
Uruguay-based digital payments company dLocal announced a pause in its expansion plans.
Asia-Pacific
Cross-border payments infrastructure network Thunes expanded its Acceptance network to five markets in southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.
