Terra, LexisNexis partner to enable risk-proof international money transactions

NEW DELHI: Terra, a mobile-first international payment network, incubated by Mahindra Comviva, has entered into a strategic collaboration with LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a global big data, technology and analytics company, to protect its network against financial crime and facilitate secure growth of mobile-powered cross-border transactions.

The release explained that the globalization of financial markets and the growing move to digitize remittances have made it easy to move funds to any corner of the world. With an increase in the volume of activity, there is a heightened need to safeguard money transfer networks from potential money laundering and to strengthen compliance.

In the wake of intensifying regulatory requirements and strict compliance controls, combating money laundering and fraud represent a major challenge for international money transfers. Globally, service providers continue to grapple with mounting complexity and costs of compliance ─ resources, time and money ─ which, in turn, raises barriers to entry for new players and impacts growth of existing players. According to industry estimates risk management and other costs tied to AML compliance have risen more than 50 percent year-on-year.

Terra interconnects mobile wallet service providers, banks and remittance companies to build a global network to serve remittance-dependent households in regions with low banking penetration, primarily Asia, Africa and Latin America. The ability to implement effective measures to protect service integrity whilst balancing escalating compliance cost pressures is crucial to attract partners, achieve rapid scale and drive adoption of formal remittance products.

International money transfer networks inherently span multiple jurisdictions and variations in Customer Due Diligence and Know-Your-Customer processes across countries make services susceptible to misuse. Comviva says that working with LexisNexis Risk Solutions provides a robust, first-line of defense to secure transactions processed over the Terra network. LexisNexis Risk Solutions deploys state-of-the-art intelligence tools to provide an end-to-end customer screening service that detects and assesses the compliance and business risks of customers behind a transaction, as well as monitors counter-parties for risk profile changes.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions delivers actionable information on potentially risky transactions to enable informed authorization decisioning in real-time. For example, Terra can proactively block suspicious transactions based on the originator or the beneficiary’s risk score. By conducting payer and payee risk assessments on a global scale, participants on the Terra network derive the maximum leverage of knowledge from different law enforcement and supervisory authorities, which strengthens domestic monitoring and compliance to build a secure transaction environment.

Commenting on the alliance, Ambar Sur, Founder and CEO, Terra said, “Working with LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a market leader in risk management and compliance services, helps us to conduct business globally with confidence. Terra derives economic value from the power of establishing global connections between multiple service providers. The ability to maintain the highest level of security and deliver a trusted transaction environment is our priority number one. Terra with LexisNexis Risk Solutions strengthens risk governance by providing an enhanced layer of protection against potential misuse, and empowers all scheme participants to meet regulatory requirements whilst minimizing time, resource and operational costs.”

“We’re honored to be selected by Terra as its compliance risk management solutions provider,” said Thomas C Brown, Senior Vice President, U.S. Commercial Markets and Global Market Development, LexisNexis Risk Solutions. “When working with companies like Terra our goal is to collaborate to ensure that their risk management processes operate as efficiently as possible. One way we do that is by creating highly-effective screening procedures that lower operational costs through false-positive reduction. By way of our WorldCompliance solution Terra, and companies like Terra, have access to global, timely risk coverage.”

LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Terra are focusing collective efforts on combating fraud and providing participants on the Terra network with a secure business environment. A shared resource across multiple partners encourages consistency and ongoing improvements in the execution and oversight of core compliance functions.  The significant agreement helps LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a company with a rich history steeped in big data technology and entity screening, to expand its presence in mobile payments.

Terra anticipates that with its deep industry knowledge, data, analytics and high-performance technology, LexisNexis Risk Solutions will provide an uninterrupted customer experience for the company’s partners. Transactions are screened against sanction sources using a real- time API, which provides a resilient, low-latency capability for processing high volumes of traffic reliably.