EBA Clearing runs pilot for pan-European fraud and anomaly detection

EBA Clearing has announced that it has issued the specifications for its pan-European Fraud Pattern and Anomaly Detection (FPAD) functionality. The pan-European payment infrastructure provider also delivered a developer portal, including a sandbox, to support users in the development and testing of FPAD’s application programming interfaces (APIs).

At the same time, preparations for the go-live of FPAD functionality have made great strides over the summer, with nine banks from six countries contributing to the data model training of the ongoing analytical pilot phase. The aim of the analytical pilot is to develop models that identify fraud patterns in cooperation with users and to qualify anomalies based on their feedback.

FPAD will cover a range of real-time fraud prevention and detection tools, including an IBAN/name check, to support the fraud-fighting efforts of payment service providers (PSPs) across Europe. The tools will enable STEP2 and RT1 users to complement their individual risk view with insights on patterns and anomalies from a central infrastructure level perspective.

FPAD will be an integral part of STEP2 and RT1, which are the largest payment systems for euro credit transfers and instant payments by volume and participation reaching every corner of Europe. Deployment will start with a post-transaction investigation feature as well as transaction and account risk assessment functions, which can be leveraged by users before executing a transaction.

 

BofA’s CashPro Chat adds AI and ML for business clients 

Bank of America says it is elevating the experience of its business clients through enhancements to CashPro Chat, a virtual service advisor within the CashPro banking platform. The bank says the platform is used by more than 40,000 corporate and commercial clients around the world to manage their treasury operations. 

CashPro Chat now includes the same proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities behind Erica – the company’s virtual financial assistant that lets users access account information, transfer funds, send money to friends and family, and more. Business clients can now view transactions, find information about their accounts and navigate CashPro functionality. As needed, the virtual advisor will route more complex requests to specialised service teams to resolve. 

CashPro Chat supplements the CashPro Search feature, launched in May, that enables clients to easily find a specific transaction from potentially hundreds of bank accounts. This time-saving function acts like an online search engine that can locate information across multiple data sets using keywords. 

“Finance teams today need access to information quickly, at any time of day, and from any location,” said Tom Durkin, Global Product Head of CashPro in Global Transaction Services (GTS) at Bank of America. “Whatever we can do to eliminate friction will help them respond better and faster to real-time events and demands. This latest enhancement to CashPro Chat is a great demonstration of how we’re doing just that.” 

 

Deutsche Bank and EIB aim to give mid-caps easier access to sustainable finance

Deutsche Bank and the European Investment Bank (EIB) are entering a new cooperation to support mid-sized companies with their sustainable transformation ambitions. Firms with between 250 and 3,000 employees will be able to apply for long-term loans through Deutsche Bank to finance their transition to more sustainable business models. The EIB will provide guarantees covering up to 50% of the loan sum. The EIB guarantees will benefit the borrowers in full.

The cooperation will make a total of €400m available to such companies, with at least half of the loans earmarked for financing projects that boost renewable energy production.

These guarantees are part of an EU-wide linked risk-sharing (LRS) programme, which uses risk-sharing to reduce some of the access barriers to finance caused by current economic uncertainties, such as supply chain bottlenecks, inflation, rising interest rates and insecure energy supply.

“The energy transition in particular entails a high need for transformational financing for many companies,” commented Hauke Burkhardt, Global Head of Corporate Bank Lending at Deutsche Bank. “Sustaining this significant financing volume requires strong partnerships – especially between promotional and commercial banks. The LRS programme serves just this purpose. The new partnership between the EIB and Deutsche Bank provides corporate clients with reliable support for their transformation projects.”

 

Alpha to buy large stake in Cobase

The UK-based Alpha Group has announced its intention to acquire 85% of Cobase, the ING-nurtured fintech that enables corporates to manage their banking relationships, accounts and transactions in one interface. The conditional agreement is subject to approval by the Dutch central bank.

Cobase was founded in 2017, with initial funding from ING Ventures after the concept was successfully proven in an ING Accelerator programme. The company employs a team of around 30 employees and is headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Cobase has grown to over 100 clients and has revenues of over €2 million per year.

Since its inception, ING has maintained a strategic relationship with Cobase with wholesale banking relationship managers offering the Cobase product to their mid-corp clients. Over the years, ING continued to invest in the company and provided connections to clients to build a strong foundation for the business.

 

Doconomy and BCG to expand access to tech solutions that advance climate action

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has announced a strategic partnership with Doconomy, a provider in climate technology, aimed at supporting financial institutions in the development of their sustainability agendas.

Doconomy has developed an ecosystem of financial tools to enable users to make environmentally sustainable financial decisions. Among Doconomy’s tools is the Åland Index, a cloud-based impact as a service for CO₂e and H₂O calculations for all digital financial transactions.

The collaboration will deliver strategic insights and tech solutions to clients, which should help them to enhance their ability to deliver sustainable impact.

 

IndusInd Bank launches virtual card for corporate cross-border payments

IndusInd Bank has launched Virtual Commercial Card, a credit card that aims to redefine cross-border transactions for corporates and travel agents. In a tie-up with Visa and Juspay, India’s payments operating system, this virtual card has additional layers of security that can be defined for each transaction, which grants the users complete control over their international expenses. 

The offering is tailored to cater to the requirements of corporates and travel industry, who make numerous bookings in multiple foreign currencies. With the Virtual Commercial Cards, these commercial users can generate virtual cards or credentials in foreign-denominated currencies as well, safeguarding the parent card number, ensuring security. Each virtual card can be customised with transaction-specific limits and the expiry dates can be defined to ensure secure payment experience. 

“Providing a high degree of control, reduced complexity and complete transparency, this commercial card solution built on the Visa Payables Automation platform also allows for multiple user access and better expense management, while providing the highest standards of transaction security,” said Ramakrishnan Gopalan, Head – Products, India & South Asia, Visa.

 

Mastercard to embed virtual cards in GEP’s procurement software

GEP, a provider of procurement and supply chain AI-driven software, strategy, and services has announced a partnership with Mastercard to simplify the commercial payment experience within its GEP SOFTWARE platform by using Mastercard’s virtual card technology.

GEP will embed Mastercard's virtual card platform, which is connected with more than 80 banks globally, into its procure-to-pay (P2P) ePayables solution to enable medium and large-scale enterprises to manage all B2B spending within the technology platforms they already use. This integration aims to simplify accounts payables processes for both sides of B2B transactions, reducing long-tail spend problems that are caused by managing thousands of suppliers and tens of thousands of invoices.

Through the embedded virtual card experience, GEP clients should benefit from easier reconciliation of invoices, greater efficiency and accuracy. Improving the ability to facilitate early payments and enhance visibility to improve cash flow provides large and mid-sized clients with certain advantages. These include improved cash-flow for suppliers, increased working capital for corporate buyers, enhanced security and compliance controls, and better visibility through automated reconciliation.

“Virtual cards have a significant role to play in digitising transactions between buyers and suppliers,” said Rebecca Meeker, executive vice president, Global Partnerships and Segments, Mastercard. “By collaborating with GEP, Mastercard is embedding its scalable virtual card technology into the platforms driving commercial transactions to simplify and enhance the B2B payment experience.”

 

Modern Treasury and BMO look to improve commercial payment flow speeds 

Modern Treasury and BMO have announced the launch of an offering for shared commercial banking clients, enabling them to manage and track complex, high-volume payment flows. 

Geared toward businesses operating in the financial services, real estate software, insurance and healthcare industries, the solution combines BMO’s suite of banking capabilities with Modern Treasury’s financial operating system for money movement. The partnership is designed to enable faster, more flexible payments, frictionless automated reconciliation, real-time financial data, pre-built reporting capabilities, and bespoke operational support.

The integration provides companies with the technical and operational support to manage and track complex, high-volume payment flows. This includes collaboration on internal processes that align to each other’s operational capabilities, providing mutual customers with high levels of service. 

“With the rise of software and digital finance, companies are integrating payments within digital products more and more,” said Dimitri Dadiomov, co-founder and CEO of Modern Treasury. “We expect this trend to accelerate.”