Podcast: AI, RPA, fraud detection, data sharing enhancements in 2024 | Bank Automation News

Whitney McDonald 0:03
This episode of The buzz is brought to you by bank automation summit us 2024. This annual event is tailored to resonate with financial services professionals focused on business optimization through technology and automation. Learn how to overcome implementation challenges by hearing firsthand from sea level executives from institutions such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo city and more. There is no better place to get a read on the competition than at Bank automation summit us 2020 for Early Bird registration ends February 2 Save $200 By registering at Bank automation summit.com My name is Whitney McDonald. I’m the editor of bank automation News. Today is January 30 2024. The buzz welcomes Monica Eaton chief executive at chargebacks 911. She is here to discuss Tech Trends. She’s keeping a close eye on including RPA AI advancements fraud, evolution, and of course, chargebacks. She founded chargebacks 911, more than a decade ago, and prior to that had a career in E commerce. So

Monica Eaton 1:01
I founded chargebacks 911, geez, over a decade ago, after being an E commerce merchant, myself, I had a marketplace dealt with chargebacks. And it was born out of necessity. So fast forward, I never thought that I would be, you know, an international company and doing business, you know, with large financial institutions and all sorts of online merchants and businesses. But that’s where we are today. So chargebacks 911 is a company where that that actually solves chargeback problems. And chargeback is really a dispute between a buyer and seller when a credit card or a debit card is involved. And what happens is the consumer ends up going to their bank to request a refund because something went wrong generally, instead of going to the business that they purchased it from. And chargebacks. 911 is a technology platform provider. So we provide automation software, and all sorts of tools and technology that help exchange data for chargebacks and automate a lot of processes that are required to manage you know this this pesky statistic, our clients, our financial institutions, like banks, as well as merchants, or business owners. And we operate all over the world with four different locations, and just under 400 employees worldwide.

Whitney McDonald 2:49
Great. Well, thank you again for joining us on The Buzz 2023 was a transformative year for the banking industry, there was lots of talk of AI and Gen AI even took off and more in payments, technology and digital adoption and digital wallets and all that good stuff. But without talking too much about 2023 We’re here to talk a little bit more about the future look of 2024 So the question for you is what banking and technology innovations? Do you really have your eye on for for 2024?

Monica Eaton 3:19
Great question. So 2024 I think, you know, there’s there’s a lot that is going to change with the innovation around AI. Specifically, you know, it’s not, it isn’t even as it’s, it’s actually pretty unprecedented what, what is happening in, in our industry and in the world. I think the technology evolution that will end up affecting banks, commerce, even change the way that consumers behave, shift our demands, will be pivotal, probably similar to some of the structural changes that we all witness through through COVID As a matter of fact. So for example, when we look at, you know, the application of AI and some of the advancements with tools such as chat, GPT, etc, you know, all of us have heard of what type of, you know, some of the innovation that is that is that that’s happening, but also just the ability to duplicate a process create automation, not just with speed and accuracy, but actually even better. And I think, you know, this is it’s very exciting, but it’s also very frightening, especially for a legacy environment like in payments in the banking industry. where oftentimes, you know, people will define innovation as just simply making something faster. I think it’s equally exciting to consider this type of technology. gives us the ability to really challenge the status quo and look at how we can do things even better. It’s going to challenge the way we think about things. Create, you know, opportunities for it’s going to be create more inclusion, there will be more competition in the market. Because, you know, previously, it used to be where you had to have the best product, this is something that, you know, all of us, myself included, I’ve, I’ve definitely rest on my laurels on on believing we have the best product or technology is always, you know, staying a step ahead. However, I think as we look at 2020 2024, it’s going to be not only technology, but technology will become more of a level set, it will be about relationships, it will be about people. Ironically, I think there’s going to be even more value placed on, you know, talent, people and really human ingenuity, despite the fact that you have all this technology that is threatening to automate and replace humans, I think what we’ll find is, it’s going to be so accessible, that actually, the human capital will become more valuable, the relationships, the connections, connectivity, infrastructure, and you know how things work. And that blueprint, will will actually add the most value. So what this means in terms of payments and disputes and chargebacks, I think we can also look at, you know, biometrics coming in and being stronger, there’s continuous demand, or better mechanisms to reduce fraud. And there will be more data sharing, we can see, there’s, you know, some of the brokerages and, and advocacies collaborative efforts that are happening in in Europe are going to continue and hopefully, you know, influence the US market as well. So lots of collaboration and sharing data, and in creating, you know, more industry insights. Lastly, you know, in the fraud space, we’re on the cusp of, you know, all of you have a terrific amount of alternative payments, right. And I think that is going to continue to surge, mainly because merchants are seeing banks are saying costs are continuing to increase. Competition is fierce. And, and competition is fierce between them. But it hasn’t been that fierce when it comes to payments, the card market still owns the majority of the E commerce market share. And I think that that will begin to shift in 2024, as some of these alternative payment methods, explore new arenas, and new consumer protection mechanisms, allowing them to be more competitive, you know, delving into democratizing some of the fraud so that it can be a safer environment. We’re looking at, you know, variable recurring payments. I mean, there’s all sorts of initiatives that are really centered in creating a much more level marketplace for multiple payment methods. Digital currency, I think, will, I know, it’s very volatile, but I think we’ll start to see that level out. And and just, you know, a lot of open doors, a lot of open doors to say the least. Absolutely.

Whitney McDonald 8:44
I mean, everything that you’re talking about is definitely a coincides with what we’ve been covering as well. And just thinking about how far things have come in 2023, especially with AI, being one of those areas that has been has come leaps and bounds thinking about 2024 I think that the word that you said is it’s exciting, but it’s also a little bit frightening to see how fast the innovation can change.

Monica Eaton 9:09
Oh, yeah, it’s broad. I think, you know, fraud is like the the absolute dichotomy right? On one side, it’s like this is technology that you’re that we’re seeing, can literally duplicate somebody’s voice signature, and impersonate them on the phone to steal money. I mean, there’s there. This is literally the type of technology it’s capable of right. But at the same time, it’s like, this is the secret sauce that we’ve been missing to resolve the fraud problem in the whole world. It’s like you it’s a catch 22 And it definitely like anything new, right? It’s going to go through, we’ll see. Just like a sigmoid curve. I think we’re going to see some pitfalls. It will be a bit of a roller coaster. But you know, wherever there’s a problem, there’s opportunity. I think there is more upside the downside?

Whitney McDonald 10:05
Yes, definitely on the fraud side of it, I’ve been having several conversations. And one of those is is just as much as the good guys are leveraging AI to fight fraud. The fraudsters too, are using the technology for different creative ways to commit to commit fraud, just the same. So like you said, it’s a catch 22. Yes,

Monica Eaton 10:27
it’s it, we all are interested in exploiting opportunities. And unfortunately, there are equal opportunities on both sides of the equation.

Whitney McDonald 10:38
Now, I know that you have put together some look ahead into into what bank technology and innovations can really determine the financial landscape for 2024. I know that we just talked through a few of those. But you also have have dove into what RPA will bring to the industry and 2024 Maybe we could dive a little bit more into cybersecurity, and new immersive technologies, and even Neo banking. Would you mind diving into what some of those have in store for 2020? For?

Monica Eaton 11:11
Sure, sure. So, um, so let’s start with the RPA robotic process automation. So for us, we we label this tool is emulation, robotics emulation. So imagine, you know, used to be screen scraping, and this is something that nobody wanted to actually talk about. The reality is, this is pretty high tech stuff. And and if you, you know, even if we take a look at I think it will, it actually can compete with open banking in some ways, because the the, the applications and the, I guess the demand for this type of application is so widespread that you can, there’s terrific use cases, not just for creating automation internally, which is really what robotics have traditionally been used for. But with all and here’s, here’s the issue, right. So historically, when you use robotics, then it’s been a complete pain to maintain. So you build the code, you create all these different scripts, and then providing that the software never changes, it will continue to work similar to a macro, well, with the use of AI, then you can infuse into those algorithms into those scripts. So that now you have a really a mechanism that is going to help predict, if there is a change, where was that change. And really, it creates just a very, very smart layer of automation. And this allows you to essentially the, you know, scale, so many different resources in such a short amount of time, reduce integration requirements, and achieve speed to market in areas that previously were probably unthinkable. So if you consider, you know, let’s say you have five different data sources, well, to create, to leverage technology resources to create API connections to each of those, and then join all that data, and then analyze all of that data, that could be a six month project, maybe even longer. And it’s it’s heavy resource strain with with robotics, and with a lot of the AI methods that can be attached to this, that has the ability to, you know, create, really, it’s OCR recognition on the fly process, automation intelligence, that you’re infusing into that, that create, you know, that, I mean, it is it is super exciting stuff, you know, being able to, to get data and then automatically encode and decode it, and you’re, you’re condensing that process in such a, a, an efficient manner. What that it, it just, it allows tremendous complexity to be reduced into a pretty simple application that is much faster to deploy and not not as cumbersome to manage and it’s getting smarter and smarter. So, so anyway, super excited about the that the opportunities in in connecting you know, smarter technology to those types of tools and the fact that it’s becoming wider adopted wider used, I think that that’s it’s going to continue because we we will always have, you know, use cases and making making this smarter. I think, you know, just make sense. And, and it just goes along Along with, you know, using technology to replace a lot of mundane, you know, human resources that can be used to leverage other other ideas and strategies. And then if we look at, you know, the advancement of I think you were talking about neobanks, which is another thing that I talked about. So, you know, if we, if we study the market, and and look at what consumer behavior is doing, where the demands are taking us, there’s no doubt that the technology and the evolution that we’ve had on the back of COVID, and really, you know, moving everybody to an online environment, that’s probably carved or created. What’s, what’s a good word, as probably shaped a lot of consumer behavior, and really changed the way we think about things. It’s, it’s created new standards, new norms. So today, very few of us ever go to a physical bank, you know, we, we, we probably do all of our banking through a mobile app, we pay our bills, we, you know, it’s it’s becoming, you know, we’re one with our device, I don’t think any of us now even leave home or even go anywhere without having a phone by our side. And this has become our identity. It’s not just you know, and we look at, you know, these devices are now connected with wearables, and there’s all sorts of things there. So I think there’s going to be, you know, even more opportunity for, you know, more innovation and banking, efficiency, better rates, more functionality, things that are very tech forward. I think that, especially with the millennials, the Gen. The Gen Z’s coming up the Gen. Alphas, I mean, we’re having younger and younger generations, that have grown up, literally on iPads, and we need to recognize, you know, my, my young kids literally didn’t learn how to handwriting, they started out with an iPad, they’ve done everything on iPads, they’re in high school, operating on iPads, they’re using MAC’s I mean, it’s a totally different generation, you have, you know, even in fact, in chargebacks, an interesting stat, so a large number of disputes are actually generated from toddlers that are using their parents phone to Play apps. And they’ve actually figured out how to buy points, and make all of these charges on iTunes and Candy Crush. And it’s creating a chargeback problem. But you you just have an incredible aptitude to the digital world that’s becoming a comfort zone is becoming a new standard. So I think as as banks is in 2024, look at how do you compete in this environment, it’s about personalization. It’s about knowing your customer, and preparing for the next generation and that next generation, they that they’re going to be pretty digital. So I think we’re going to see more and more interest in those arenas. Likewise, you know, cybersecurity. I think we touched on this a bit. But the, the technology today has has bridged so many gaps and created. I mean, you look at Chet GPT, for example, most of us don’t realize whatever we put into a tool is now available to train it. So it is not, it isn’t just about what can you get out of it, but the entire world is going to be utilizing these tools. And so we’re all you know, we’re we’re contributing, it’s just, it’s, it’s honestly one of the most amazing things, it feels like to me, it’s sort of like, you know, moving from the the DOS environment

many, many years ago, like actually having a PC, it’s that exciting. And also that frightening because to your point, like there is a lot, there’s a lot to be exploited with anything that’s new. But if we look at cybersecurity, you know, to, to be able to to really get away from just standard hard coded roles, which many systems still use today, and actually be able to consume so much data data, you know, terabytes of data in a millisecond process that data, you know, build other relationships with that data, learn from that data. And, and really make better decisions on the fly in real time, it’s really about being able to analyze the present instantly, as opposed to how we’ve been operating in the fraud environment is, you know, traditionally, it’s just machine learning. And so you have to train this model, and you need six months plus of data. And then you can create a decision matrix, well, with the dynamic way that the world changes, the most intelligent system would be able to make a decision based on a quick analysis of the present with some intel from the past, and really be able to have a prediction based on all these different indicators and relationships, and be completely dynamic. And that’s what we have today. So I think we’ll start to see, you know, instead of a single transaction today, that transaction, that single transaction, if you think about it, it’s crazy, one single transaction in today’s world, if you pay, if you buy a product on Amazon, that transaction could be scored by six different fraud filters, and they are literally looking at the same type of data. And six times they could be coming up with a bit of a different decision. This is one of the issues. So I think what we’ll find is that the data will become much more, you know, centralized, there’s going to be more collaboration, and we’re all going to be learning from each other. And that data sharing, it’s scary in some ways. But but that’s going to really give us to centralize identities, create a safer environment, create faster exchange, reduce a terrific amount of costs and redundancy in the space, and really work toward a scenario where all fraud data is really democratized and available for everybody. Now, I don’t think that will all happen in 2024. But I do think that that, that, that this will take shape, kind of similar to blockchain, there will be so So lastly, this is this is I guess, this will be a summary of what what I look at in 2024. So, so in payments and banking, like the whole nine yards, we’ve always here, you know, what’s most important, it used to be security is most important. Everyone wants security. Number one, well, if I read a study the other day, and I think everybody would agree who’s listening. If anyone asks you, what’s your number one concern with your bank, none of you are saying security, or we’ve all taken it for granted. None of us are concerned about posting something on Facebook, about sending a payment about entering our card online, having a one click you know what we want, we want convenience. So we’ve migrated quickly from, you know, security being top of mind to, you know, we want something that’s faster. And of course, we want something that’s better. So we know it has to be secure, it needs to be faster, it needs to be better. But I think what 2024 will bring us is the reality that it also needs to be more transparent. And that transparency is really the missing element that has created not only friction, but also more opportunities for fraud, you know, higher amounts of redundancy, higher costs, and just you know, we it’s like the innovation with Blockchain. But I think the the demand for transparency and the availability of transparency, to me, this is really one of the most pivotal change or Pivotal, Pivotal changes that will affect our mindset in 2024. It will be the idea of thinking, you know, actually, we want to create an environment that is more efficient, that is more accurate, that has more integrity, and is secure. And in order to do those. We’re missing that transparency. And this was really what AI is bringing to the equation if you think about it, biometrics you know, the whole nine yards. So yeah, exciting, but but also scary at the same time.

Whitney McDonald 24:44
So keeping AI RPA and biometrics in mind. What can banks do now to set themselves up for digital success or growth or whatever it may be? This year? The

Monica Eaton 25:00
banks that will be most wise in this new year are going to be those that explore, you know, areas that previously probably felt pretty uncomfortable. But those are the areas I think that will reap the most rewards. It’s going to teach us different ways of doing things, that if we look at how the industry has grown so far, we are absolutely getting, we’re getting smarter, we’re getting better, we’re getting more secure, and we’re going to be getting more transparent. So it’s, it’s, you know, we can’t be looking to the right and left and make sure that, you know, we’re doing what everyone else is doing in order

Whitney McDonald 25:45
to is there anything that we didn’t hit on that you want to hit? Between?

Monica Eaton 25:50
You know, I also know those of us that are saying, We did cut? Yeah, rather, you’ll have a lot of editing and I hope never forward. Let’s see. Probably, oh, you know, what, actually, so So I will, I don’t know where you could cut the sin. But what I would say, Okay, so back on. So one of the reasons why I think banks should absolutely make sure that they have focus on ensuring they have a sustainable, you know, fraud prevention and chargeback processing platform, I actually cannot underscore this enough. And forget about me being in the industry, if I was not in this business, and I had a totally different business, this would still be my number one point of advice for banks, because I believe this won’t just become a competitive advantage, whether you’re an issuing bank serving card holders, or you’re on the acquiring side, serving merchants, and even more. So if you’re both an issuer and acquirer, the amount of inefficiencies redundancies and costs and opportunities and value added services strictly around disputes and chargebacks. And fraud is off the charts. And just to share some statistics recently, and I was blown away myself, and this is actually an area that I have a business in. So I’ve always thought that chargebacks and disputes, which is a type of post transaction fraud, that every bank has a regulated responsibility to process and not really any of them do it great. It’s a totally different skill set, kind of like you know, operating a payroll service within your organization. Really, it’s never a core competency. Highly recommend, like figure out a way that that you have a scalable platform for that. But bottom line. So growth of E commerce transactions worldwide on an annual basis is between 15 and 17%. And that’s substantial. I mean, that is really substantial. I always thought growth for chargebacks. And disputes were around 20%. And you know, recently I I was corrected. MasterCard has stated growth from chargebacks. This is just for MasterCard alone, which is about 50% of the card use in in the UK and European environment, internationally 32%. So we’re looking at almost 50% more growth in chargebacks and disputes than in transactions. And the things that most banks don’t recognize and don’t realize is that the chargeback and dispute strategy, even though this is probably only affecting maybe half a percent of your total transaction volume. This is affecting probably 80% of your acceptance rate issues and your false positive issues that is either causing you to lose cardholders, because they’re removing you due to a false decline, a bad decline in inaccurate decline, or they’re having a bad experience with a chargeback. It is all about having the right data, it is all about having a good customer experience is all about having a fast resolution and the end the the more that banks can, you know, have leverage connections, deliver speed to market, be able to consume data and I mean a lot of data that is dynamic in real time and create as as fast of a decision as possible to rid themselves of fraud and create a better customer experience. Those are the banks that I think you know it. Well I don’t even have to say those are the banks that will end up gaining the most market share. And if we just look at the way that the world is growing. It’s um, it’s crazy. I did not I myself did not realize how fast this has picked up it just it’s a testament to show us how quickly you know this, the concept of you know, I want it faster, I want it better. I want to instant. This is I always say this is the age of entitlement, the age of consumer entitlement. Every consumer today, we are the most impatient consumers that have ever existed in the entire world. And instant is our new expectation. So those banks that can deliver instant are going to win. And you need to make sure that you you have all of the necessary ingredients in place to be able to to supplement those requirements.

Whitney McDonald 30:56
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