Payments giant Visa and open-banking platform Tarabut Gateway are coming together to develop products and solutions through open-banking technology.

“Together with Visa, we will leverage our data infrastructure to bring new and improved products to customers,” Abdulla Almoayed, chief executive of Tarabut Gateway, said in a release.

The pair will focus on delivering solutions for credit risk assessments, advanced analytics and insights, according to the release. The collaboration follows Visa’s recent participation in a $32 million fundraising effort for the Middle East and North Africa open-banking platform.

“The future of financial services is being shaped by next-gen digital innovation, with open banking and data sharing serving as a significant driver to help consumers better manage and access their finances,” Otto Williams, head of product, partnerships and digital solutions for Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa at Visa, said in the release.

Woodforest National Bank selects Savana for tech overhaul

Woodforest National Bank selected software provider Savana for a full technology stack conversion of its operations, including core, back-office and customer channels.

Traditionally, the bank headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas, built a lot of its supporting systems in house, so the cost savings is “pretty substantial,” Savana Chief Executive Mike Wolfel told Bank Automation News. The conversion is “a massive offload in terms of their internal costs to build and maintain their own systems,” he added.

The bank will use cloud-based Savana for a complete “overhaul of the technology stack,” Wolfel said. Savana will rework the bank’s operations from call center to branch functions.

“The platform will enable us to bring our departments together and standardize workflows across the organization,” the bank’s Chief Information Officer Richard Ferrara said in a release.

Savana and Woodforest have been working on the conversion strategy for about a year, Wolfel said, and the conversion is planned for mid to late 2024.

Eltropy launches video banking fraud prevention

Digital communications platform Eltropy is helping community banks verify users for fraud-prevention purposes via its video banking service.

The company’s video-banking platform is being used by Groton, Conn.-based Chelsea Groton Bank and Tempe, Ariz.-based TruWest Credit Union. Each bank uses Eltropy’s video banking to scan users’ IDs, sign documents and assist with instant wire transfers, according to an Eltropy release.

“We have a lot of IDs on file, so seeing a person on video and comparing [them] to the ID we have on file, that’s another layer of security for us,” Iwona Leatherberry, member services and digital banking manager at TruWest, told BAN. “We’re able to watch their body language, we can see if they are actually answering the questions and know the personal questions that we’re asking or are they reading from a file or reading from a sticky note.”

Using the upgraded video banking capabilities, financial institutions can conduct an instant check of their own member database, allowing customer service representatives to verify that the ID a person is using matches up with the information the banks or credit unions have on file, Eltropy Chief Product Officer Jed Taylor told BAN.

“In terms of the things we’re trying to help with, its wire transfer fraud, it’s new account fraud,” Taylor said. “Many banks require you to confirm your identity before you change your address, because that’s preparing for future fraud, so they can do those types of transactions to verify the identity before they process a change-of-address form.”