Swift develops payment screening solution for fraud prevention

The new payments controls service will enable Swift’s customers to screen their payments according to chosen parameters defined by the bank’s own risk and compliance policies.

The solution can then ‘red flag’ out-of-policy payments or suspicious activity – this could include detecting payments made to new beneficiaries or outside of business hours, or an unusual combination of currencies and countries.

The company claims the service will boost the risk management in cross-border payments, and help banks meet regulatory requirements, including sanctions, know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) regulations. Using machine learning techniques, the service will also better understand a bank’s own transactions patterns over time.

The solution is based on the same capabilities as Swift’s sanctions screening service, which was introduced in 2012 as the first offering in its financial crime compliance portfolio.