MonetaGo to Introduce First-Ever Global Solution against Duplicate Financing Fraud

MonetaGo, a financial technology solutions provider, today announced a new platform to combat financing fraud in trade finance on a global level.

Duplicate financing fraud has been a long-standing problem in trade finance. In such cases, firms may secure financing in the country of origin, the destination country, and a financial center – all on the same trade. As banks and financiers embrace digitization, they are provided with new opportunities to share information while maintaining the privacy and security of client information. MonetaGo’s approach is key to breaking down information barriers among and between banks, platforms, and regional solutions.

“Duplicate financing occurs for many reasons. A unified solution used by lenders to combat this type of financing fraud in international trade is the most effective way to help resolve this problem,” said Mark Borton, Head of Trade & Working Capital Finance Product and Asia Transactional & Trade, National Australia Bank. “The MonetaGo Secure Financing Platform appears to be a simple utility that lenders worldwide could potentially use to greatly improve the trade finance experience.”

“Information silos between lenders results in duplicate financing fraud as they often have little insight into whether the client has submitted transactions for financing to other lenders,” said Ed Aldorino, Head of GTB Asia, Lloyds Banking Group. “The integrity of the entire trade finance landscape is vital for the flow of trade finance, and that’s why we were excited to participate in testing of the platform with MonetaGo. The easy-to-understand platform enables us to prevent double financing fraud around the world in ways which were not possible before and we look forward to the impact it will have on the markets we serve.”

In order to deliver the standardized solution at a global scale, MonetaGo is partnering with SWIFT on a proof of concept. The company will leverage SWIFT’s proven and robust API-enabled infrastructure, reassuring users about connectivity management, authentication, security, interoperability, and network reach. Over 11,000 institutions connected to SWIFT will have access to MonetaGo’s finance validation service in a trusted and globally standardized way.

“Finance fraud in cross-border trade cannot be fully mitigated with local registries, so it makes perfect sense to leverage SWIFT’s global reach to help institutions around the world to solve this problem. By bringing global API standards, identity and security, SWIFT can help to mitigate against the growing challenge of digital islands. We are working with MonetaGo to pilot the solution that will provide our community of financial institutions with an important tool to combat financing fraud at the international level,” said Louise Taylor-Digby, Global Head of Trade Strategy, SWIFT.

The company was able to develop the platform after being awarded the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Proof of Concept (POC) grant, which provided funding support for experimentation, development, and dissemination of nascent innovative technologies in the financial services sector. Following positive results and feedback, the registry is now being deployed and customer onboarding has commenced. Leveraging the SWIFT API channel for standardization and distribution of the solution expands reach and effectiveness.

“Interoperability between disparate, local registries built on different technology platforms requires common standards and specifications to achieve results,” said Shinichiro Yamazaki, Global Head, Trade Innovation Unit, Global Trade Finance Department, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation. “We were pleased to have participated in the testing and development of a system that is simple and capable of preventing fraud on a global scale”.

The platform operates by identifying whether financing transactions use the same documents. By registering a unique “Document Fingerprint” which is created by cryptographic hashing, the registry does not store actual customer or transaction data, and the fingerprints cannot be reverse-engineered to reveal the data that created them. The system then indicates the status of a registered document as “financed”.

”Unfortunately, lenders do not have a robust solution today that performs automated detection of duplicate financing fraud, due to various reasons including confidentiality for sharing of transaction data between lenders,” said André Casterman, Board Member and Chair Fintech Committee at ITFA. “Thankfully, MonetaGo’s Secure Financing platform provides a unique document fingerprint that protects the privacy of the lenders and applicants’ data, while also performing a deduplication check and preventing fraud.”

The platform is not only being offered to banks and traditional financiers, but also to Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFIs) and non-bank lenders including fintechs and trade finance funds.

“MonetaGo’s Secure Financing solution can mitigate fraud not only for bank financiers but alternative lenders also; this is exactly what the trade finance ecosystem needs. For too long, financiers of all types lacked the ability to communicate effectively and efficiently to prevent duplicate financing fraud, and it’s exciting to see this innovative fintech pioneering the way ensuring confidence can be upheld globally in trade fraud mitigation,” said Tom James, CEO/Founder, TradeFlow.

Ultimately, those that stand the most to benefit are not only the banks and lenders, but trade finance end users and customers.

Organizations that are interested in implementing the Secure Financing platform can begin the onboarding process through SecureFinancing.org as the system has been approved to move to production.