Siili Solutions’ Post

Transcript

Welcome to the Siili Composable Bank podcast. Today, we have a guest known as Mr. Payments, Juuso Paulasua from the SOK payment services team. Welcome, Juuso. Thank you. In a nutshell, could you briefly explain what your job entails? Sure, briefly. I work as a Development Manager at SOK in the payment services team. Our team is responsible for payment acceptance, ensuring that payments work smoothly in brick-and-mortar stores, online shops, and mobile applications. It was really in a nutshell in a nutshell. Now that we have you here as a guest, we'd like to talk with you a bit about payment security and AI as a general topic. Favorite themes. Yeah, well, it's been noticed. You've been very active on your social media channels, especially lately, as I follow you myself and many people in the payment industry do too. You've talked a lot about payment fraud, scam online stores, and generally about these kinds of payment-related scams. Why is this topic important? Right now. Well, it's always an important topic. Scams, fraud, and crime have always existed. The unfortunate fact is that as long as we have money and transactions, there will always be attempts to misuse them. These phenomena we've seen in recent years have evolved quite significantly, constantly taking on new forms. These affect an increasingly larger group of people. It looks very much like these fraudsters are constantly developing their methods, making it even harder for professionals to detect them. Just recently, the financial sector reported last year's figures. Finns were targeted for over 100 million euros in fraud attempts. That's an enormous amount. The host is quite shocked. numbers indeed Host Hyyti��inen This affects the entire society. Host Yes. And of course, it can also affect us as individuals, or our close ones, or really anyone, so it's extremely important. It's a very scary topic. Unfortunately. How about, considering your role at SOK and the employer you represent, how do you approach it? Let's say the security of online payments, and of course, the security in-store payments is also extremely important. Yes. Well, perhaps the first thing to say is that it's something you can't compromise on at all. It is extremely important. Of course, there is much more to payment than just security���user experience, ease of payment, and so on. Nowadays, payment has also become quite a buzzword, with various applications making it a focal point of interest and attention. But the foundation of everything is the trust that, as a customer and consumer, I can rely on the payment process being secure and functional. Likewise, as a merchant, I can trust that I will receive my money and no fraud will occur. Exactly. If we think about AI as a promoter of security, in what ways could a retail operator, like SOK for example, utilize AI to protect customers' payment transactions? This is a very interesting phenomenon, as there's constantly a lot happening in the payment ecosystem. As banks, payment service providers, and card schemes start using AI for fraud prevention, the benefits also extend to retailers and consumers. It's actually quite fortunate that significant investments aren't required to start reaping those benefits. Of course, with AI helping to identify more phenomena faster, fraud is constantly evolving. If we think about the types of activities that can target online stores, the ability to detect different patterns much quicker and respond to them is crucial. How do you believe the security of payments will also evolve in the coming years? There's certainly another perspective here, that it's a bit of a "catch me if you can" game with these fraudsters as well. The faster companies adopt AI for fraud prevention, the more likely it is that these scammers will be right behind or even ahead, thinking about what tools they can use or how they can enhance their activities with AI, for example. How do you believe security will develop in the coming years? Well, as I said, this is unfortunately a continuous game of cat and mouse, and new phenomena keep emerging all the time. Right now, services like Google Pay, Apple Pay, and wallets in general are at the forefront of payment methods. But from the retailer's perspective, these payment methods seem to be relatively low-risk. The card is tokenized. Could the potential for misuse be narrower than with traditional card payments? We've started to see, for example in China, these wallet farms where stolen card information is fed into wallets, and then these physical phones are even being sold there. Here we have a phone with a wallet containing ten stolen card details, and the highest bidder gets to use them. I fundamentally trust that the core of payment systems is always secure, but these phenomena are evolving so rapidly that we can't become complacent about our sense of security. Yes. It's really important that we stay ahead and, as companies and within the entire payment ecosystem, find ways to ensure that each player can guarantee security for their customers and collaborate extensively. What about AI, then? We also talked about fraudsters using AI. Could it also be used to carry out new types of scams? You mentioned these wallets as a new clever method, but are there other risks you see where fraudsters could utilize AI? Yeah, well, in general, how I see the use and utilization of AI. Well, in the field of payments, preventing fraud is perhaps the clearest use case, but I've had many discussions with various partners and colleagues about what other use cases there might be for AI in this area. And I believe we don't yet know nearly all of them. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg of what is to come. Unfortunately, this also applies to the other side. For example, deepfakes have started to be used in phishing, leading to very large frauds. Whenever we talk about payments and money, fraud crime is not just about individual consumers' cards and thousands or hundreds of euros, but it can involve millions or even tens of millions. I'm afraid that both for better and for worse, we've only scratched the surface, and the coming years will show what else is in store. And besides these individual large sums, there's also the issue of large-scale phishing. Just a few years ago, it was said that the Finnish language provided good protection because foreign criminal groups targeting Finns had very clunky language, making it easy to recognize phishing messages. But the situation is quite different today. The same goes for fake online stores. Previously, they used Google Translate for very clumsy translations, but nowadays the language is getting very close to native, and it's no longer so easy to spot scams. Exactly. As a payment expert with a background in this field, I've also come across some extremely skillfully crafted scam websites that are difficult to identify, even though I've been trained by my employers to recognize the signs. But those signs are no longer visible. Just as straightforwardly as before. Thanks for these insights. Where can listeners follow your thoughts and learn more about these topics? Yeah, LinkedIn is the main channel where I've been vocal about these things, and I will continue to be, so feel free to follow. Great, that's important and good. Thank you. Thank you