ThetaRay, a leading provider of AI-powered transaction monitoring technology, and Payoneer (NASDAQ: PAYO), the commerce technology company powering payments and growth for the new global economy, will be collaborating to monitor global cross-border payments on Payoneer's platform.
ThetaRay's SONAR SaaS solution will be used to monitor millions of transactions per year.
The long-term agreement to deploy ThetaRay's SONAR system highlights ThetaRay's expansion into the fintech payments market with its cloud-based SaaS solution following years of success in the banking industry. It is expected to go into production in early Q2 2022, when ThetaRay will begin monitoring digital payments and other services that Payoneer offers to its customers. SONAR is the industry's most advanced financial crime prevention solution for cross-border payments.
"With regulations becoming increasingly stringent, we needed to find a more efficient, AI-based transaction monitoring system that doesn't require the time and expense of on-prem development," said Jani Gode, Chief Compliance Officer, Payoneer. "ThetaRay's cloud-based solution is fully scalable to grow with our business, as we expand relationships with payment providers and banks globally to give more value to our customers."
Cross-border payments are crucial transactions that connect local economies throughout the world to the global financial system. However, they often involve a complicated sequence of banks operating across multiple currencies in different countries, creating a challenge for fintechs and banks to have full transparency into beneficiaries. By providing full visibility across complex, cross-border transaction paths, ThetaRay provides a platform that helps protect fintechs and banks against the risk of being exploited for money laundering, terrorist financing, human trafficking, and narco-trafficking while enabling partners to increase their volume of transfers.
"As the world's go-to partner for digital payments, Payoneer understands better than most the importance of safe, secure cross-border transactions," said Mark Gazit, CEO of ThetaRay. "The magic of ThetaRay SONAR is that it doesn't just protect against money laundering threats; it may also enable fintechs and banks to increase their growth and revenues, improve customer service, and help decrease financial inequality by offering services in traditionally unbanked regions. We look forward to collaborating with Payoneer to bring trust to the new global economy."
"Payoneer continues to cement its position as a market leader and innovator for digital commerce, and we look forward to collaborating with them in the fight against money laundering," added Shay Dovev, SVP, Strategic Accounts for ThetaRay.
The collaboration includes a unique, flexible pricing model through which ThetaRay will receive a base fee to cover millions of transactions per year and will only increase fees if Payoneer passes that threshold and grows its business.
SONAR is based on an advanced form of AI called Artificial Intelligence Intuition that can mimic human feelings, perceptions, inferences, hypotheses and reasoning to make better decisions. This enables the rapid discovery of both known and unknown money laundering threats, with a peerless 95% detection rate and 90% reduction in false positives compared to rules-based solutions.