Unit21, a global risk and compliance leader that proactively mitigates risks tied to fraud, money laundering, and other financial crimes, today announced a new bundle of features for Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions.
These features use Generative AI (GenAI) and machine learning (ML) to help banks, credit unions, payments companies, and fintechs proactively detect and block risky transactions.
According to the National Automated Clearinghouse Association (Nacha), same-day ACH volume saw a 47% year-over-year growth when comparing the first quarters of 2023 and 2024, due to factors such as the continual increase in real-time payments usage among consumers and businesses.
“With the steady rise in real-time payments among consumers, ACH fraud will continue to be a significant threat to the U.S. financial ecosystem, challenging FIs and fintechs to figure out how to stop bad actors from gaining access to their networks,” said Trisha Kothari, CEO and co-founder at Unit21. “Our new ACH fraud solution uses GenAI and machine learning to bring real-time risk monitoring and investigating tools to fraud practitioners, empowering them to mitigate risk while further gaining their customers’ trust and loyalty along the way.”
Unit21’s new ACH fraud solution proactively stops risky ACH transactions such as first-party fraud, account takeovers and scams by predicting fraudulent activity using four key features:
ACH Risk Scoring - Unit21 deploys an ML model for FIs and fintechs that can flag R10s. It leverages behavioral analysis, network data, entity, transaction history, and IP enrichment that is unique to each business to reduce risk and return rates significantly.
“Out of the Box” Rules - Unit21 helps prevent ACH fraud with pre-built rules that reduce false positives and save time, while allowing the flexibility to filter and add conditions based on a business’ data, even on the fly with no code.
Counterparty Risk - With Unit21’s Fraud Consortium, FIs and fintechs can proactively identify account/routing numbers and fuzzy name matching schemes previously flagged as fraudulent anywhere in the Unit21 network, stopping fraudsters in their tracks.
GenAI Agent for ACH Fraud Investigations - Unit21’s GenAI Agent can quickly flag and investigate suspicious activity and streamline case management tasks including online presence, adverse media searches and document analysis. With Unit21’s AI Agent, investigation time can be reduced by more than 60%.
Kothari added, “As faster payments are adopted across fintechs and FIs, they will need a faster and better way to stay ahead. Unit21’s ACH fraud solution stops suspicious activity in its tracks and flags illicit behavior before it ever has a chance to become an issue.”