OTTO Payments Adopts Hawk AI Solutions for AML Compliance

OTTO Payments, the payments division serving the OTTO marketplace, has adopted Hawk AI’s solutions for anti-money laundering (AML) compliance.

The organization will use Hawk AI’s Transaction Monitoring and Customer Screening technology, the companies said in a Tuesday (Dec. 12) press release.

“Due to rapid growth, OTTO Payments was looking for a trusted provider that could rapidly implement a world-class system, and ensure leading performance well into the future,” Mirko Krauel, CEO at OTTO Payments, said in the release. “The Hawk AI team demonstrated their technology leadership and willingness to work closely with our teams to hit ambitious goals.”

Hawk AI’s AML solution not only meets regulatory requirements, but also efficiently detects financial crime, according to the release. The technology is scalable, accurate, and features Hawk AI’s explainable AI and intuitive user interface.

The company’s modular solution can either enhance or replace traditional rules-based systems, adding artificial intelligence (AI)-powered customer and transaction screening that delivers greater accuracy and reduced noise, the release said.

Serving banks, payment providers and FinTechs, Hawk AI processes billions of transactions across 60 countries, per the release.

“Hawk AI’s mission is to be a formidable ally against the escalating volume and sophistication of financial crime,” Tobias Schweiger, CEO and co-founder of Hawk AI, said in the release. “Our scalable technology empowers organizations to forge ahead with ambitious growth plans, all the while fortifying their defenses against the threats of money laundering and fraud.”

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that financial institutions using AI and machine learning (ML) to combat fraud have found them to be powerful tools in stemming fraudulent transactions.

Those currently using these technologies suffered, on average, 30% fewer transactions that resulted in fraud losses in the last 12 months than those that do not use these technologies, according to “The State of Fraud and Financial Crime in the U.S. 2023,” a PYMNTS and Hawk AI collaboration.

AI integrations — and the ability of AI models to continually learn from new data and contexts — can also help ensure that the balance between security and convenience doesn’t swing too far in one direction, Schweiger told PYMNTS in an interview posted in September.

“A tool like Hawk AI that’s capable of combining things like sanction screening and anti-money laundering transaction monitoring with fraud protection while enriching the signals of one another and vice-versa is the answer for how banks can win the arms race and how they can do it much more efficiently,” Schweiger said.