TerraPay hires former Visa exec, Revolut adds AI to battle fraud

U.K. digital payments and financial services firm Monzo will shortly raise about $400 million from a mix of its existing investors, a deal that could value the company at more than $4 billion. The Financial Times reports that these investors include CapitalG, Alphabet's investment fund; China's Tencent; and U.S. investor Ribbit Capital (which is involved in Walmart's fintech venture). The funding round could be complete by the end of the month, and comes as Monzo expected to become profitable by the end of the year, the FT reports. Monzo in the past year began reporting to Experian and added more information to its TransUnion reports, such as overdrafts, status of recurring payments and other payment histories as it attempts to expand in the U.S. It also recently added a salary sorter, which enables users to divide their paychecks among different payment types when receiving their salary. —John Adams

London challenger bank Revolut has added a tool that uses machine learning to flag payments that are potentially part of a scam or other fraud, then automatically declines the payment. If a consumer is part of a payment that the Revolut product snares, they are redirected to an anti-scam section within Revolut's app. The consumer is then asked to provide more information about the transaction, which undergoes more vetting before a payment can be processed. There is also an option to chat with a rep at Revolut to determine if the payment is part of a scam or attack, or if it's a false positive. AI has grown as a tool in financial crime prevention, largely due to its ability to analyze data faster than traditional methods, and to improve its accuracy in stopping fraud over time. —John Adams

Visa, Checkout.com and digital real estate investment platform Stake will work together to enable consumers to upload funds across borders to Stake accounts to invest in rental properties in the United Arab Emirates. The firms are attempting to expand access to more investors as the UAE real estate market expands quickly. The product will use the Visa Direct P2P payment service and Checkout.com's application programming interface to connect investors to Stake. Visa's non-payment services strategy includes making it easier to process international transactions. In 2023, for example, the card network participated in a $72 million funding round of Thunes, a Singapore-based technology company that connects underbanked consumers to businesses and digital payment services. —John Adams