Corporate banking fraud is a fact of corporate life today. Fraud is increasing with 70% of French companies reporting fraud or attempted fraud in 2018. More specificaly, supplier fraud is the most common type of fraud attempt in France, home country of our company. Fraud is also becoming a multi-facets phenomen growing in sophistication. Fraud attempts are changing in nature as fraudsters become more professional, organized and resourceful. As a result, sucess rates are higher and more money is taken.
Our solution has been built on companies’ willingness to work together and mutualize resources and information to address this matter. The French companies with whom we built the solution (the pioneers) aimed to set up a collaborative solution based on mutualisation/pooling: regarding enrollment and payment data.
We developed an innovative platform based on AI and blockchain technology in order to reduce costs of fraud prevention and recovery and consequently support the competitiveness of European businesses. This solution is highly secure thanks to the blockchain which authentificates the data. This program can be set up on existing system in a short time (1 to 2 months deployment).
We offer a fully up-to-date repository of suppliers’ bank contact details (based on the combination: IBAN / company identification number), reinforced payment security and we also propose an insurance policy to cover fraud. We provide an independent and open solution. The company is neither in the payment field nor offers a payment tool. The solution can be integrated within different existing tools and allows for industrialization.
Coporate banking fraud has several negative effects:
- Significant costs for the companies affected, both from the fraud itself and on the costs incurred subsequently (second payment to the supplier, audit, implementation of new security policies),
- Loss of trust between trading partners,
- Negative atmosphere: fraud had some dramatic consequences in companies impacted (suicide, waves of layoffs),
- Negative impact on the reputation of the company.
Our overall objective is provide European companies with a solution that give them the insurance that electronic payments are sent to the right recipient. We believe My SiS-id (the platform) has the potential to significantly reduce the risk of fraud in Europe, reduce costs of fraud prevention and recovery and consequently support the competitiveness of European businesses.
Beacause fraud is cross-border and the problem is a global one, our 13 pioneers accounts have already shared their intention to deploy the solution in other countries where they have particular interests. A first set of priority countries has been identified based on countries exposure to fraud, payment factory and cash-pooling concentration,but also based on the feedback from our pioneer accounts: Belgium, Germany, Holland, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, United-Kingdom, Italy. SiS-id has closely collaborated with local early adopters to adapt the solution to each country.
The feasibility study allowed SiS-id to specifically quantify the scalability of the model and identify the target countries with the optimum need. We have identified that My SiS-id will be commercialized/deployed in countries using the IBAN as standard. Finally, the commercialization will be extended to non-IBAN countries by 2021.