August 17, 2019, 12:30 a.m. • Innovation|Innovation~Partnerships|Innovation~Technology
From banking and food services to medicine and education, digital transformation has been the catalyst for unprecedented advances in almost every industry. Of particular notice – and a source of excitement for a tech aficionado like myself – is how financial service and fintech brands with legacy systems have moved to incorporate the old and the new to meet consumer need and expectation.
At MoneyGram, we have been growing for decades with reliance on legacy systems. During various conferences and keynotes where I share the technical advances we are making, people are surprised and ask, “why MoneyGram?” when we talk about new technology and how it relates to the business. But with almost half of today’s consumers (46 percent) using digital channels exclusively for their personal banking, the better question would be “why not?”
Consumer protection is key to us. And a good example of new technology adoption is our use of machine learning algorithm to prevent fraud and scam attempts. Within a few milliseconds of collecting personal and transactional data, we need to decide to either accept that transaction, reject it or collect further information (enhanced due diligence) and determine if the persons involved are “good” or not. Machine learning is very powerful in the sense that we get a lot of data from past incidents of reported fraud. Therefore, we can teach our algorithm, what is and what is not potential fraud and proceed from there. Another example of adoption of new technology is the use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to handle several compliance-related manual tasks such as SAR filing, providing opportunities to delegate people to handle more complex compliance work.
The key for fintech brands that have relied on legacy systems is to build upon that foundation – and not rest upon it. There is limitless potential for how innovative systems and new platforms will influence fintech brands, especially our segment of money transfer services and I’m excited to have this forum to educate, share ideas and to start conversations. We’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg here and I plan to dig more deeply into several of the topics above and hope to hear your feedback and questions on these future posts.