The Mule Insights Tactical Solution (Mits) is being introduced following a series of pilots which enabled banks to shut down hundreds of mule accounts and disrupt large, well-concealed money laundering rings.

Mules are required to launder funds fraudulently obtained as a result of Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud, phishing or malware scams. They are recruited by a variety of methods, including spam e-mails, adverts on genuine recruitment websites, approaches to people with their CVs available online, instant messaging and adverts in newspapers.

The technology is being introduced as part of a concerted pushback against APP fraud, in which customers are duped into sending funds to bogus accounts.

By bringing together payments data from multiple banks and overlaying it with proprietary analytics and algorithms, Mits follows suspicious payments as they move between different accounts regardless of whether the payment amount is split between multiple accounts, or those accounts belong to the same or different financial institutions. The technology creates a visual map of where and when money has moved, providing new intelligence for fraud teams to take action.

David Rich, EVP, Vocalink Services comments: “The innovative data science behind MITS enables us to spot and trace illicit accounts like never before. By bringing together payments data from multiple banks in a secure way, we are able to deliver a new kind of intelligence that analyses billions of transactions, connects the dots and then identify how the laundered money is split, layered and dispersed across the whole banking network. Banks are unable see the complete picture of the movement of stolen or illicit funds as they only have access to information within their own institution. This is showcasing industry collaboration at its very best.”