Ant International, a Singapore-based digital payment and financial technology provider, has developed an AI-based FX model that can predict hourly currency exchange rates. This advanced model, developed over several years, helps merchants reduce transaction costs and allocate more resources towards business growth. The AI model can now predict currency exchange rates on a daily or weekly basis, enhancing the security of millions of daily cross-border transactions across over 200 global markets.
“Integration of AI into the processing of cross-border transactions is of critical importance to further strengthening global trade and commerce, especially for SMEs who up to now can’t afford real-time global settlement services. In deploying AI in merchant services, enhanced fraud detection and prevention against new scamming schemes like deepfaking is as important, if not more important, as increasing operational efficiency,” says Yang Peng, Chief Executive Officer of Ant International.
The new AI-powered FX model has the capacity to consolidate hundreds of existing models into a single, more accurate system. However, relying heavily on one model to process millions of daily transactions also introduces risks. “We have safeguards in place to ensure human intervention if discrepancies arise between the new and old models. We avoid having blind faith in AI, maintaining checks to uphold accuracy, ” says Mr. Yang.
Advancements in generative AI, particularly deepfake technologies, are posing significant security challenges for financial institutions, as these sophisticated forgeries are increasingly difficult for humans to detect. To counteract AI-assisted cyberattacks, Ant International has developed an anti-deepfake electronic Know Your Customer (e-KYC) tool over two years. This tool has an interception success rate exceeding 99%, according to Mr. Yang.
OCBC and Ant International signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Tuesday to focus on achieving 24/7 real-time transactions between Singapore and Malaysia, via Ant International’s Whale platform using AI and innovations to improve the efficiency and transparency.
PayPay, Japan’s top QR payment operator, announced an expanded partnership with Alipay+, Ant International’s cross-border mobile payment and digitalization technology solution, broadening its merchant coverage network across Japan to provide foreign tourists their preferred payment services via domestic e-wallets.
