Could AI and customer-centricity be weapons in the fight against payments fraud? There’s reason to believe. 

“When you are developing processes and procedures to identify transactions that may be unauthorized or authorized under false pretenses … you have to have that understanding of what is ‘normal activity’ for your customer. AI and its computing power can truly assist with that,” said Amy Morris, Nacha Senior Director, ACH Network Rules. “It will bring it to a point where those analyses and decisions are being made a lot faster than somebody who’s trying manually to look through different types of account history.” 

Morris spoke on an episode of Nacha’s Payments SmartCast podcast, where experts examined one of the payments industry’s most challenging balancing acts: fraud prevention and customer experience. 

“Some of the conversations that we have around risk management and security are, ‘Do they come at the expense of seamless and fast processing?’ AI can really help to bridge that gap,” said Morris. 

Saurabh Joshi, President of CSG Forte, a complete and customizable payment processing platform and a Nacha Preferred Partner for ACH Experience/Account Validation/Risk and Fraud Prevention, called it “critically important” for customers to have seamless payment experiences. As the final step in a transaction, the payment process leaves a lasting impression that directly influences the customer’s decision to continue doing business with a company. 

“Creating technologies which do not keep that perspective in mind often leads to bad experiences,” said Joshi. He told the podcast that CSG Forte is leveraging the latest technology to ensure effortless, customer-centric interactions, while also prioritizing security “first and foremost.” 

“We are partnering with some of the biggest and the best in the industry” to build AI stacks that can monitor risk and fraudulent behaviors, and then “mitigate those fraudulent transactions dynamically as they evolve,” said Joshi. 

Much more was discussed, and you can listen to the complete podcast below.