Banking during the pre-digital days involved transport. One had to visit a branch — and remember, there is a reason people still joke about bankers’ hours — wait for an employee and fill out paperwork.
But in a new PYMNTS interview, DataVisor CEO and Co-Founder Yinglian Xie told Karen Webster that digital technology has created convenient access to financial services for everyone, everywhere in the world.
However, like all good things, it has an unfortunate and costly downside: Those open doors have created an opportunity for fraudsters and money launderers, who use that convenient access to advance their ill-intentioned criminal ends. It’s a costly free ride that has caught many high-profile financial institutions (FIs) — such as the European Central Bank (ECB), ING Group and Danske Bank — in its trap, generating fines and shaking the confidence of regulators that seek stepped-up enforcement.
That’s not the only increasing area of fraud enabled by better technology and technological deployment. Faster payments, for instance, pack a lot of potential — technologically speaking and in terms of usefulness.
And they are clearly filling a need, attested by the explosive growth they’ve demonstrated worldwide over the last few years. The opportunities are wide-ranging — for financial institutions, for workers and for merchants, all of whom can do more when they have quicker access to their cash. But with the power of faster payments comes the potential for faster fraud.
What does all of this mean? It means keeping pace isn’t just about speeding up the payments, but also about staying ahead of the fraudster.
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