UAE-based mobile banking solution NOW Money has partnered with ThetaRay to implement its cloud-based anti-money laundering (AML) solution for transaction monitoring. The announcement marks ThetaRay’s AI SaaS solution expansion within the GCC fintech community, with the company set to offer its AI-powered transaction monitoring technology to NOW Money to monitor cross-border payments and offer support in financial crime prevention and money laundering on the payments platform.

ThetaRay’s anti-money laundering solution, SONAR, has combined transaction monitoring and sanctions list screening and was selected by NOW Money as the company looks to prevent financial crime by unveiling both known and unknown money-laundering crimes, in addition to preventing attempts to violate sanctions in real time. With abroad money transfers continuously growing and the remittances’ value from the UAE having reached USD 780 billion in Q1 2022, the partnership is believed to be essential, as per press release information. Furthermore, the agreement highlights ThetaRay’s extension in GCC financial institutions following the September 2020 signing of the Abraham Accords that was looking to normalise relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.

The transaction monitoring solution and its impact on NOW Money’s offering ThetaRay’s solution SONAR is based on a proprietary AI form, artificial intelligence intuition, that replaces human bias and enables the system to recognise anomalies and find unknowns that do not match normal behaviour, including new typologies. When leveraging it, fintech and banks are enabled to implement a risk-based approach to have truly suspicious activity effectively identified and a full picture of customer identities created, including across complicated, cross-border transaction paths. Due to this, rapid discovery of both known and unknown money laundering threats is permitted, with the reduction in false positives compared to rules-based solutions reaching up to 99%.

Established in 2016, NOW Money offers mobile banking services for workers of all levels of income that might have previously been overlooked or underserved, with financial inclusion and the aim to provide equal access to financial services being at its core. All customers are given access to its mobile banking app, with the company offering low-cost financial services such as local and international mobile top-up, contactless Visa card usage for online and card transactions, as well as cross-border money transfers at low exchange rates to enable customers to send money to families back home. NOW Money officials stated that the Gulf region presents a great opportunity to offer banking services and financial education to millions of unbanked or underserved people, and ThetaRay’s AI technology that leverages advanced machine learning is thought to enable the company to have an unlimited number of transactions processed, have its business expanded into high-risk area, and to gain the trust of financial partners and regulators worldwide.

When it comes to low-income countries and unbanked communities, international money transfers present an important method of having money brought into these regions. Despite this, these countries can make up a high percentage of high-risk jurisdictions, and remittances have the chance of being considered a potential conduit for financial crime for illicit funds. ThetaRay representatives have advised that the partnership with NOW Money aims tot create trust within the digital financial world and eliminate financial injustice against migrant workers.

By having its AI technology chosen by a Gulf fintech, the company believes to have marked an Abraham Accords milestone and is looking to have collaboration accelerated with additional financial institutions within the region. .