Bottomline Technologies Adds New Options to Mobile Payments Field

Consumer-grade mobile payments are everywhere. There are actually some who think that there are too many options in the consumer mobile payments space. No matter what your thoughts on that, we know that mobile payments in the corporate space is a much thinner-populated affair. That’s about to change, at least somewhat, as Bottomline Technologies recently tipped us off about a new business payments system that’s designed to take on the increasingly active hacker threat.

The new solution, known as Secure Payments, now can monitor not only SEPA and SIC4, but also FileAct and ISO 20022 payments. Previously, the system could monitor ACH, Bacs, Bill Pay, Check, Faster Payments, SWIFT and Wire, and now it’s added on several others. That’s a surprising depth of field, and it only gets better. With the new Secure Payments system, users get a single interface that’s able to both detect fraud and help in its subsequent investigation.

The system calls on high-end analytics capability to track user behavior, and advanced machine learning to better parse when something out of the ordinary—a potential indicator of fraud—has taken place. This allows for real-time detection, and the faster detection takes place, the greater the potential that the fraudsters will be found and stopped.

Bottomline’s head of market development James Richardson noted “Part of the complexity with business payments is that they don’t come in a single flavor. The sophistication of payment related fraud schemes are evolving rapidly. Organizations need adaptable fraud detection to protect different types of payments and across multiple networks.”

True, of course, and while this isn’t bulletproof fraud defense, it is a useful new tool in advancing fraud prevention. It will likely prevent at least some fraud that would have otherwise taken place unnoticed without it, and for those who would have otherwise been hit by fraud, it will be a welcome advance. While there can be some drawbacks to using machine learning and analytics for fraud prevention—like false positives and blunted transactions in the process—it’s always good to have eyes on payments.

Bottomline’s new tools should go a long way toward slowing fraud in business payments, and that’s good news for the businesses involved. Preventing any fraud keeps cash from going out the door unnecessarily, and that’s a valuable outcome for any business.