Citibank has selected Akamai Technologies, a cloud-native security service provider, to fight fraud on its platform, according to BuiltWith, which tracks technology adoption and use among websites. 

 Akamai “helps financial institutions manage financial aggregators, protect against malicious bot attacks and protect customer trust,” an Akamai spokesperson told Bank Automation News.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based fintech serves financial institutions including USAA, Liberty Mutual, and Mitsubishi UFG Financial Group, the spokesperson said. The Citibank deal was completed in October. 

Akamai uses generative AI “for anomaly detection, bot detection, [verifying] when an entity is accessing their bank account with the right credentials” as cyber-attacks get more sophisticated, Chief Executive Tom Leighton said during the company’s Q3 earnings call Tuesday. 

The publicly traded Akamai has raised $1.1 billion since its 1998 founding, according to Crunchbase, and has a market capitalization of $16.7 billion.  

Wells Fargo picks Arkosa Labs for cyberattack prevention 

Wells Fargo in October tapped Arkosa Labs, a cyber-crime prevention company, to fight bot attacks on the bank’s platform, according to BuiltWith. 

The $1.6 trillion bank invested in the company in May 2021, when Arkosa Labs raised $70 million in a series C funding round, according to an Arkosa Labs release. Since its inception in 2017, Arkosa has raised $106 million, according to Crunchbase. 

Arkosa Labs uses AI to fight fraud, a company spokesperson told BAN. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company — with customers including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Expedia — says it reduces 98% of bot attacks, according to the company’s website. 

NatWest selects IBM’s watsonX to improve chatbot 

NatWest and IBM are collaborating to enhance the bank’s virtual assistant, Cora, through generative AI, according to a release from IBM on Monday. 

The $890 billion bank will use IBM’s watsonX, which help clients identify uses for generative AI, according to the release. NatWest aims to use generative AI to add capabilities to Cora, including personalized and conversational responses to complex customer queries, the release stated. 

“Generative AI represents a shift in the way large volumes of structured and unstructured data can be leveraged to better support customers and employees,” IBM General Manager for Financial Services Global Industries John Duigenan told BAN.  

“NatWest recognized that generative AI could further enhance Cora, making queries even easier for customers because they would be able to use natural language to pose their questions and because they would be able to access information that was previously inaccessible via the chatbot because of its unstructured format,” he added. 

Once integrated with watsonX, NatWest’s Cora will become a digital concierge for customers and will be called Cora+, according to NatWest’s release. 

The solution will be rolled out to NatWest customers in the coming months, Duigenan said. 

Plaid, Adyen join forces on pay-by-bank 

Payments companies Plaid and Adyen are joining forces to provide a pay-by-bank channel to customers, according to Adyen’s Nov. 2 release. 

The account-to-account channel is seeing more adoption among financial institutions and businesses as they look to lower card transaction costs, John Anderson, head of payments and head of product at Plaid, told BAN. 

“Shifting even a relatively small percentage of payment traffic to pay-by-bank can equate to huge cost savings for companies with large payment volumes,” Anderson said. “Within e-commerce, there will likely be an evolution starting with large dollar/check replacement scenarios where pay-by-bank is already seeing traction today [buying a car, travel purchases, renting an apartment], but is still relatively untapped in terms of overall market potential.”  

Pay-by-bank will become “a seamless part of most online payment experiences in the U.S. over the next several years,” Anderson said. 

 JPMorgan and Mastercard joined forces last month to provide pay-by-bank to customers for bill payments, while Bank of America is also looking to expand its pay-by-bank services in the U.S. 

Visit Bank Automation News’ Transactions Database, which lists the technology selected or acquired by companies in the financial services industry, with a specific focus on technology that enhances automation.

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