AI fears, scams and fraud

As a baby boomer, I grew up in the 1960s with the concept of artificial intelligence still in the realm of science fiction, even though development of computing systems actually started in the early 1940s.

I was likewise enthralled by the then popular sci-fi television series Twilight Zone and sci-fi books written by American author Ray Bradbury that my mother had.

To be honest, I really did not fully grasp the concept of science fiction. I was just learning how to read and appreciate books as my mother was an avid reader and was a librarian by profession. Reading then for me was an educational tool to learn new words and learn beyond what I was being taught in school.

I grew up in an era of innocence, of obedience, respect and literally learning by the book, and through examples – guided by principles, respect, honor, diligence.

Math skills were the most difficult, but also the most important skills my mother taught me.

However, in the 1960s, learning math was a memorization process. We had to memorize the multiplication tables and learn about equations, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division the long way.

Calculators were still part of science fiction for most of us then, even as work on such machines was already being done. Thus, up to grade school, my generation learned how to do and rely on long-form calculation. Pocket calculators became available only by the 1970s, but they were pretty expensive then.

But unbeknown to us then, it was the start of our journey to where we are now – increased dependence, perhaps more accurately overdependence, on tools of convenience that no longer require us to think or calculate for ourselves.

So here we are now at the start of AI, realizing that sci-fi is now reality – a reality that has exposed us to scams and fraud in our daily lives as we adopt more technology and gadgets.

As more Filipinos adopt digital payment systems, the incidence of phishing scams and online fraud has increased and continues to evolve and become more sophisticated.

Almost all of us are targeted for fraud, as well as local banks, fintech companies and payment services which need to arm themselves with fraud prevention software that will ensure their ability to protect their growing number of users.

While we as end users think that we are mostly the victims of fraud, we are not. Even the companies that provide us with digital wallets and payment services are also the target of scams and frauds – something that the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has noted and has prepared for in pushing for the enactment of Republic Act 12010 or the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA).

The AFASA basically notes the vital role of banks, non-bank financial institutions and other payment service providers. With the increased use of electronic and digital financial services, the BSP has seen the necessity of raising awareness on the proper use of digital financial accounts and protecting the public from cybercriminals and criminal syndicates who use such payment systems in committing fraudulent activities.

A recent interview with Troy Nyi Nyi, senior vice president and general manager for the Asia-Pacific region of SEON, a Singapore-based firm that provides fraud prevention and anti-money laundering compliance to digital and payment services that has been expanding and offering its services here, opened my eyes to the risks for such providers.

SEON was founded in 2017 in Budapest by Tamás Kádár and Bence Jendruszák.

SEON, according to Mr. Nyi, actually stands for Security Operations. It is an AI command center for real-time fraud prevention and AML compliance, helping thousands of companies worldwide stop fraud, reduce risk and protect revenue. It enriches customer profiles, flags suspicious behavior and streamlines compliance workflows.

SEON is a business-to-business (B2B) company. Its customers are banks, fintechs, payment providers, e-commerce platforms and iGaming operators. Its technology works behind the scenes to protect those businesses and their users from financial crime. It brings fraud prevention and AML compliance into a single system, so risk teams work from one shared view instead of stitching together separate tools.

The platform assesses more than 1,100 first-party signals across email, phone, device, IP and behavioral data in real time, at the moments that matter most, from onboarding and login through to checkout and payouts.

SEON’s AI detects hidden fraud networks, builds rules, visualizes data and drafts regulatory reports. Teams can also connect their own AI tools directly to SEON’s risk data through a secure integration. With integrated fraud and AML capabilities, SEON operates globally from Austin, London, Budapest, China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Thailand and Australia.

In the Philippines, Mr. Nyi revealed, it currently has about 10 customers, which include Home Credit, Billease, and Salmon Bank. It is also reaching out to the country’s two biggest digital wallet providers and even to some e-gaming firms.

SEON recently partnered with Exist Software Labs to expand fraud prevention and AML capabilities across Southeast Asia. The partnership brings SEON’s fraud, identity and compliance technology to Exist’s banking, fintech and payments clients in the Philippines and across the region.

The partnership reflects SEON’s continued investment in Asia-Pacific, where the company has seen strong momentum over the past year. The Philippines is one of Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing digital financial services markets, facing rising fraud and compliance demands as more transactions move online.

According to Mr. Nyi, “Fraud and financial crime keep growing more sophisticated, but most organizations are still trying to manage that risk across tools that were never designed to work together. By combining Exist’s engineering and integration expertise with SEON’s real-time fraud prevention and AML technology, we’re helping organizations in the Philippines and across Southeast Asia bring those signals into a single view and act on them faster.”