Airwallex uses generative AI to hone customer onboarding

Global financial platform Airwallex has implemented generative AI to improve customer onboarding, as part of a series of features it plans to roll out to enhance user experience through generative AI and natural language processing (NLP).

The new tool uses large language models to speed up ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) assessments.

Airwallex reported that early results showed a 50% reduction in “false positive” alerts, on average, when the generative AI tool is used in its KYC and onboarding processes.

Generative AI has also shown to increase the number of customers that pass through the onboarding process without human intervention by 20%.

“With generative AI, we’re honing our KYC tools to be much more accurate and context-aware,” said Jacob Dai, co-founder and chief technology officer at Airwallex.

“We’re making it faster and easier for our customers to get up and running with Airwallex – often within minutes – while enhancing our ability to detect and prevent fraud on our platform.”

Airwallex has confirmed it intends to launch additional AI-powered functionalities in 2024.

In the past, Airwallex used rules-based analytics and NLP to scan new customers’ websites, which were effective at identifying high-risk keywords, but also generated a “significant volume of false-positive alerts”, slowing down the KYC process.

“Generative AI helps Airwallex’s models to be much more sensitive to the context and meaning of keywords,” added Dai.

“When scanning a customer’s website, the model can better distinguish between a retailer selling a ‘military-style’ jacket and a merchant selling prohibited military goods, or a ‘champagne-colored’ dress and actual champagne, or smartphone accessories versus actual smartphones being sold illegitimately.”

At a roundtable co-hosted by Red Badger and Open Banking Expo on 19 October, participants representing UK and European banks and lenders discussed the intersection of Open Banking and AI.

Participants discussed and debated how to use generative AI to improve the customer experience and enhance the interactions between banks and their customers.