Mastercard has launched a service in Asia Pacific, called Trace, that uses AI to identify and prevent money laundering and financial crime.
Powered by large-scale payments data from multiple financial institutions, Trace provides holistic intelligence beyond an individual firm’s siloed view, enabling tracing of crime across a payments network.
Mastercard notes that the rise of real-time payments in Asia Pacific has attracted money launderers and “mules”, who try to evade detection by moving funds rapidly between multiple accounts.
Financial institutions have largely relied on semi-manual methods or in-house AI to detect these illicit patterns, but these typically rely on their own data and lack the holistic, network-level perspective needed to trace such far-reaching criminal activity.
The payments giant says its new offering uses data science techniques to trace potentially fraudulent transaction patterns across a network, as well as providing proactive alerts to banks about suspicious accounts.
The firm has already rolled out the technology in the UK, where it is being used by 21 firms covering 90% of the country’s Faster Payments Service network
The Philippines is the first Asia Pacific country to get Trace, where Mastercard has worked with local interbank network BancNet, which has so far onboarded 36 domestic lenders.
Matthew Driver, EVP, services, Asia Pacific, Mastercard, says: "By ensuring that transactions remain secure and compliant, Trace helps to protect consumers and financial institutions, while also fostering trust in the digital economy—which will be critical for the region’s economic growth."