Russian Central Bank Ends FX Competition

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation (CBR) announced that it has revoked the licenses of five Russian foreign exchange (FX) trading companies. According to a statement on the bank’s website, the decision was made due to “the repeated violations of the requirements of the Russian legislation on securities within one year.”

The five companies — Forex Club, Alpari Forex, Trust Forex, InstaForex and TeleTrade — will see their licenses expire on Jan. 27, and must stop all operations and return funds to their customers by that time.

The move will give major local banks control of the market. As UrduPoint reported, only four companies will now hold an FX brokers license in Russia, including VTB Forex and Alpha-Forex, which are both affiliated with the country’s largest banks.

CBR’s Head of Securities Market and Commodity Market Department Larisa Selyutina has downplayed the decision, explaining that the companies losing their licenses have only 2,000 clients in Russia, since they are all subsidiaries of international companies.

“There are not so many direct customers of the companies under our supervision  2,000 clients in total. Out of them, no more than 470 are active, those who [have] made at least one deal within a month,” said Selyutina.

For its part, Alpari Forex is not going down without a fight, and is prepared to challenge CBR’s decision in court.

“Until now, Alpari Forex, which is the Russian legal entity for the Alpari brand, has not received any official notification from the Russian regulator about the revocation of the license, and continues to serve clients in full compliance with Russian legislation. Upon receipt of the notification, the Russian legal entity will act in full compliance with the legislation of [Russia] and will appeal the decision of the regulator in a manner prescribed by law,” according to a corporate statement.


Mastercard and Feedzai Team to Fight AI-Powered Scams

Feedzai, Trust Payments, risk management

Mastercard has teamed with financial crime prevention company Feedzai to help financial institutions prevent scams.

“As payments continue to evolve, fraudsters are increasingly using AI to scam consumers,” the companies said in a news release Tuesday (Feb. 18). “This cost more than $1 trillion last year, with more than 50% of consumers saying they had encountered a scam at least once a week.”

To that end, Mastercard will leverage Feedzai’s fraud platform, available in more than 90 countries, to deploy its Consumer Fraud Risk (CFR) solution to customers across many key markets around the world.

According to the release, CFR provides sending and receiving financial institutions in account-to-account payment transactions with intelligence to spot and prevent scams in real time. Since going live in the U.K. in 2023, the value of authorized push payment (APP) scams has fallen by more than 12% in that country.

Feedzai’s AI-native Financial Crime Prevention Platform, the release adds, is used by leading financial institutions to protect more than a billion consumers worldwide, and upwards of $8 trillion in transactions each year.

“With more than half the world’s population affected, the scale of scam fraud is not only having a devastating impact on consumers, but also surpassing the GDP of many individual economies,” said Johan Gerber, executive vice president, head of Security Solutions at Mastercard. “Together with Feedzai’s global platform we will scale our first-of-its-kind scams solution to more markets, helping more financial institutions combat financial crime faster than before.”

PYMNTS Intelligence research has found that scams became the leading form of fraud last year, ahead of digital payment fraud. The share of scam-related fraud rose by 56%, and financial losses from scams increased 121%. Scams now make up 23% of all fraudulent transactions, with relationship/trust and product/service scams generating the most losses. 

“These scams manipulate individuals into authorizing fraudulent transactions, often using deceptive tactics,” PYMNTS wrote. “Additionally, fraud involving compromised credentials, where individuals are tricked into revealing account details, is also on the rise.”

Additional research by PYMNTS Intelligence has found that many financial institutions (FIs) are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies to detect fraud.

“These technologies analyze large amounts of transaction data in real time, spotting suspicious activity and preventing fraudulent payments before they are completed,” PYMNTS wrote late last year.

The research found that 71% of FIs are using AI and ML for fraud detection, up from 66% in 2023. These technologies can identify anomalies and patterns that might not be detected by human analysts, allowing banks to perform quicker decision-making.