Mastercard Launches TRACE In Asia Pacific To Stop Financial Crimes

Mastercard has announced the launch of TRACE (Trace Financial Crime) in Asia Pacific. TRACE is a new tool that uses artificial intelligence to find and stop financial crimes like money laundering. It works by looking at payment data from many banks instead of just one, making it easier to see criminal activity across a whole network.

In recent years, Real-Time Payments (RTP) have become very popular in Asia Pacific. People and businesses can now send money instantly between different banks, something that used to take days. But because money moves so fast, criminals take advantage of it. They use tricks like “money mules,” who unknowingly help move illegal money, and scams to steal money from innocent people.

TRACE Uses AI To Track Fraudulent Money Transfers Across Banks

Before the coming of TRACE, banks use their system to monitor suspicious and incriminating activities, but the system can only monitor what goes on in one bank, making the apprehension of criminals who use several accounts very difficult.

Mastercards TRACE made it clear that improved technology could be used to pin down suspicious movement across the whole network system.

TRACE is a design that specializes in finding “money mules” those assisting criminals to transport illegal cash, it works in more than a bank but the full payment system. Thereby preventing fraudsters and scammers faster.

Mastercard first launched TRACE in the Philippines, working with BancNet, the country’s interbank network. BancNet has already added 36 banks to the system. With TRACE, these banks can now track illegal money transfers quickly, identify money mules, and stop financial crimes before they spread.

Banks And Experts Say TRACE Will Make Payments Safer

The Chief Executive Officer of BancNet’s, Emmie Reyes explained that financial fraudsters are becoming more innovative, which means banks are to improve their security systems using smarter tools too. She also made it clear that working with Mastercard on TRACE will enable banks fish out scammers faster and reduce financial crime.

A Mastercard executive, Matthew Driver said, TRACE will be a great step toward securing real time payments, which would in turn help the economy.  The company displayed it’s excitement to work with more banks in Asia Pacific to increase TRACE thereby building firmer financial system.

TRACE is the first tool of its kind for tracking money mules in real-time payment systems. It can be used on any payment network, making it easy to set up in different countries. With this tool, banks can better follow anti-money laundering rules and protect customers from fraud.

TRACE was first launched in the United Kingdom in 2018. Today, it is used by 21 financial institutions covering 90% of the country’s Faster Payments network. Since then, TRACE has helped find thousands of money mule accounts and is still detecting hundreds of new ones every month.

Mastercard believes that TRACE will play a key role in keeping digital payments safe and stopping financial crime across Asia Pacific.