Mastercard turns to AI for digital currency fraud crackdown

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Payment giant Mastercard (NASDAQ: MA) has partnered with Feedzai, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform, to crack down on money laundering and fraud perpetrated using digital currencies.

The partnership will see Feedzai integrated with Mastercard’s CipherTrace Armada financial monitoring tool, according to a report by CNBC. Feedzai will provide real-time alerts to digital currency exchanges on suspicious transactions with a focus on mule accounts.

“This will increase fraud detection by protecting unwary consumers, but will also detect potential money laundering activity and mule accounts,” said Feedzai co-founder Nuno Sebastio.

Mastercard’s partnership with Feedzai has been described as a forward leap in the company’s attempt to protect consumers from digital currency scams and other fraudulent activities. Using the advanced powers of AI, Feedzai says its proprietary software can scan thousands of transactions in seconds to “identify and block” suspicious transactions.

Feedzai said it scans through $1.7 trillion worth of transactions each year, saving billions of dollars from falling into the hands of scammers. With innovation at the heart of Feedzai operations, the AI firm has racked up over 100 patents since its launch, averaging ten patents annually.

Feedzai and Mastercard say other fraud detection software is focused only on leading digital currency exchanges but ignores lesser-known entities in the space. Sebastion remarked that his firm’s partnership with Mastercard will be a robust solution for consumers, service providers, and law enforcement agents keen on increasing their monitoring over the sector.

“Numerous banks that believe they are preventing illegitimate cryptocurrency transactions are, in fact, only blocking transactions involving the widely recognised and regulated entities within the crypto space and omitting the rest,” said Sebastio.

Mastercard has shown an affinity for incorporating emerging technologies in its offering, underscored by its support of digital assets and AI. In July, the company rolled out an AI-based tool to protect consumers from the existential risks of payment fraud and scams.

AI-powered fraud detection tools gather steam

Amid the rise of scam cases, Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) waded into the ecosystem by releasing an anti-money laundering (AML) service using AI to identify transaction anomalies. Designed for retail and commercial banking, Google said its new tool can spot anomalies four times more than traditional systems while reducing the times used to chase false leads.

“AI-powered transaction monitoring replaces the manually defined, rules-based approach and harnesses the power of financial institutions’ own data to train advanced machine learning (ML) models to provide a comprehensive view of risk scores,” said Google.

In order for artificial intelligence (AI) to work right within the law and thrive in the face of growing challenges, it needs to integrate an enterprise blockchain system that ensures data input quality and ownership—allowing it to keep data safe while also guaranteeing the immutability of data. Check out CoinGeek’s coverage on this emerging tech to learn more why Enterprise blockchain will be the backbone of AI.

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