NOW Money, the GCC’s first mobile banking solution focused on financial inclusion, and ThetaRay, a provider of AI-powered transaction monitoring technology, announced a collaboration to implement ThetaRay’s cloud-based AML solution “to monitor cross-border payments and support in the prevention of financial crimes and money laundering on the fintech’s payments platform.”
NOW Money selected ThetaRay’s advanced SONAR anti-money laundering solution “with combined transaction monitoring and sanctions list screening to stay a step ahead of financial crime by uncovering both known and unknown money-laundering crimes, as well as preventing attempts to violate sanctions in real time.”
The new partnership is essential “as the number of overbroad money transfers continues to grow, with the value of remittances from the UAE being Dh 2.88 trillion* (780 billion USD) in Q1 2022.”
The agreement “highlights ThetaRay’s expansion in GCC financial institutions, amid continued realization of the Abraham Accords that were signed in September 2020 to normalize relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.”
Founded in 2016, NOW Money “provides mobile banking services for workers of all income levels, who may have previously found themselves overlooked and underserved.”
Financial inclusion is “at the heart of NOW Money in its aim to provide equal access to financial services.”
NOW Money gives all customers access “to its mobile banking app, providing low-cost financial services including local and international mobile top-up, use of contactless Visa card for online and card transactions and cross-border money transfers at the lowest exchange rates to be able to send money to their families back home.”
Noel Connolly, CEO of NOW Money, said:
“There is a huge opportunity in the Gulf to provide mobile banking services and financial education to millions of people who are unbanked or underserved. Our mission is to create a world where everyone has instant and equal access to financial services they can, and want, to use. ThetaRay’s AI technology using advanced machine learning will enable NOW Money to process unlimited volumes of transactions, expand business into high-risk areas, and gain trust of financial partners and regulators worldwide.”
International money transfers are “an important method of bringing money into low-income countries and unbanked communities.” However, those countries can “represent a high proportion of high-risk jurisdictions and remittances can be considered as a potential conduit for financial crime for illicit funds.”
Mark Gazit, CEO of ThetaRay, remarked:
“We are honored to partner with GCC fintech leader NOW Money to create trust in the fast-changing digital financial world and make the world a better place by eliminating financial injustice against migrant workers. A Gulf fintech choosing AI technology from ThetaRay marks another milestone in the Abraham Accords. We look forward to accelerating collaboration with additional financial institutions in the region.”
ThetaRay’s SONAR solution is “based on a proprietary form of AI, artificial intelligence intuition, that replaces human bias, giving the system the power to recognize anomalies and find unknowns outside of normal behavior, including completely new typologies.”
It enables fintechs and banks “to implement a risk-based approach to effectively identify truly suspicious activity and create a full picture of customer identities, including across complex, cross-border transaction paths.”
This allows “the rapid discovery of both known and unknown money laundering threats, and up to 99 percent reduction in false positives compared to rules-based solutions.”