With constantly evolving technology, ever-present competition and limited resources, the payments industry has always been fast-moving. With the added burden of a global pandemic, resulting in increasing cybercrime and fraud and ever-tighter regulatory and political pressures, businesses must achieve resilience whilst maintaining the near frictionless and trusted digital experiences that customers have come to expect.

Whilst regulations, such as PSD2, try to preserve the integrity of the ecosystem by reducing fraud, regulators always grapple with long regulatory cycles. Fraudsters, unlike legitimate businesses, are not affected by these cycles, and global events, such as a pandemic, are conducive to criminal purposes. As criminals remain several steps ahead of regulations, consumers adopt new technologies, share more and more data, demand safety and expect their trust not to be broken.

Financial institutions are increasingly investing in digital channels to meet customers where they are, offering more functionality, products, and services online than ever before. Going beyond everyday banking functionality, 82% of financial institutions offer the ability to open a checking account online1. While this digital shift introduces a tremendous opportunity for organizations to acquire more customers, cybercriminals threaten new revenue by capitalizing on weaknesses in the account opening process.

Account Takeover attacks are on the rise as cybercriminals continue to develop new methods and tools to take over accounts from afar and automate fraud. Despite the widespread adoption of traditional protection solutions, such as those that rely on two-factor authentication and device ID, fraud continues to occur in fully authenticated sessions. Malware, Remote Access Tool attacks, sophisticated social engineering scams, and other creative account takeover methods have proven to successfully bypass common cybersecurity safeguards, costing financial institutions millions of dollars per year and damaging customer confidence.