Paygilant Fraud Tool Reduces Operational Costs For Mobile Wallet Transactions

Paygilant, the frictionless mobile payments fraud detection company, announced Tuesday (April 4) it was able to show how Citi was able to reduce operational costs associated with mobile wallet transactions.

In a press release, Paygilant, which was founded in 2014, said it provides an on-device mobile wallet fraud detection solution that reduces mobile wallet fraud and customer authentication friction. The solution can detect fraud on the mobile device before the transaction is conducted as opposed to after the fact, which is what happens with current systems available today. With mobile wallet transactions worldwide expected to exceed $1.5 trillion by 2020, digital wallet fraud is climbing steadily and is already six times higher than card fraud, said Paygilant in the press release. Banks are seeking to reduce this risk in a cost-effective manner; thus its help from Citi.

Paygilant said Dr. Matthew Yuschik, a multimodal mobile architect in the Global Consumer R&D group at Citi, mentored Paygilant on a proof-of-concept project as part of the Citi Accelerator Program at Tel Aviv and had positive results.

“The Paygilant team had a very solid idea that took minor design tuning to provide a strong solution using an adaptive model of customer behavior to detect and handle fraud risk. This is extremely valuable to Citi,” he said.

In light of Citi’s support, Paygilant said it has developed a product that learns and maps the spending behavior of the cell phone user and detects fraud at the point of sale on the mobile device. This removes the need to authenticate most of the transactions, which in turn results in an immediate authentication only upon a suspicious fraudulent attempt.

Paygilant said it also introduced an ROI calculator built in conjunction with Citi that reflects how banks can reduce operational costs and save millions of dollars annually by moving transaction validation to the mobile device.

“Our ROI calculator provides banks with the tool to know exactly how and where Paygilant’s solution helps in increasing mobile fraud detection and decreasing fraud resolution costs,” said Ziv Cohen, CEO of Paygilant, in the press release. “Accurate and frictionless fraud detection is a major challenge for financial institutions, and it will be more of a challenge as the opportunities for mobile wallets increase in scope.”