Payment service providers

More and more payments are digital, and more of them run through payment providers. Criminals need ways to make their money look legitimate, and to move money they have stolen through fraud.

AML rules have applied to payment providers for years. What is changing is how closely regulators check them. They look at whether you have controls in place, whether they are followed up and what you learn from them.

They also want to know who does the work. Do you have a financial crime team? How does it work, and what can it show as proof?

When controls fall short, a fine is only the start. Your reputation and your liability are on the line, and in serious cases even your licence. Banks and other providers also want to know your compliance is in order before they work with you.

You see the payments that run through you. You do not see what the same user does at other providers or banks. Some patterns only show up across all of them.

How do you spot a pattern when you only see part of it?

You see what a user pays, to whom and how often. You often do not know who they are, what they do or what their income is. That makes it harder to tell what is normal for them.

What does normal look like for a user you hardly know?

Your payment data looks different from a bank’s. Rules and tools built for bank accounts do not always fit it. They miss what matters, or flag what does not.

Is your detection built for your kind of data?