Financial institutions are championing the use of artificial intelligence, arguing the new technology can rapidly accelerate tasks like “know-your-customer” checks, customer onboarding, and document processing.
Advancements like these can drive customer acquisition and boost employee productivity, all good for the bottom line. “AI has been a game-changer in how we provide international payment and financial services. In 2024, we processed more than $1 trillion in global transactions, all supported by AI,” says Tianyi Zhang, a general manager of risk management and cybersecurity at Singapore-based Ant International.
Yet while AI presents an opportunity for financial firms like Ant International, it also poses risks. Bad actors can exploit AI advancements to intensify the threat of scams and fraud against both clients and financial institutions.
Zhang, in particular, is worried about deepfakes, “perhaps the most well-known examples of AI-generated risks.”
“In some markets, we have found that more than 70% of new enrolments may be deepfake attempts,” he notes. “We’ve identified more than 150 types of deepfake attacks.”
Last year, Microsoft warned that AI-generated deepfakes are now highly realistic and increasingly simple for anyone to produce. The company flagged that deepfakes were now increasingly being used in fraud, and called for new legislation to curb bad actors from using these technologies.
Deepfakes can be a challenge for financial institutions like Ant International, which need trusted identities to be able to carry out know-your-customer checks to comply with anti-fraud and anti-money laundering legislation.
For example, cybersecurity experts say that North Korean IT workers use deepfaked identities to get jobs at leading tech firms and funnel earnings back to the isolated country.
‘Enhanced security’
Ant International is the international wing of Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba and operator of the ubiquitous Alipay payments app. In 2024, Ant Group set up Ant International as an independent business unit with its own board.
Ant International operates Alipay+, Antom, Bettr, and WorldFirst, and is present in more than 60 markets globally. The company facilitates services like payments, cross-border transactions, and lending.
Zhang said AI helps Ant International deliver “greater efficiency” and “enhanced security” to its 100 million merchant customers worldwide, most of which are small and medium enterprises.
To combat new threats from AI, Ant International is focusing on three areas: investing in security and AI, building expertise and fintech-specific knowledge banks, and expanding its business-to-business AI products.
Zhang points to Alipay+’s GenAI Cockpit Platform, which gives fintech firms, banks and superapps real-time risk assessment, among other services. Ant International claims the platform combats hallucinations and other data risks by using over 100 recognition models and 600,000 risk lexicons.
Ant International is also gearing up to launch EasySafePay 360, an account protection program for Alipay+, in the coming months. This platform will leverage AI to manage risk and safeguard transactions, as well as offer a money-back guarantee for transactions deemed to be unauthorized.
The company hopes the platform will facilitate the growing number of cross-border payments, spurred by global travel. Ant International, citing external research, estimates that the gross cross-border travel services market could reach $1.8 trillion by 2028.
