Ant Group fintech arm rolls out new features in security solutions

MANILA, Philippines — The financial technology unit of Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Group is bringing in new features in its cutting-edge digital security solutions for the international market.

Ant Group is an affiliate of Chinese conglomerate Alibaba Group and owns Alipay, the world’s largest mobile payment platform.

In the Philippines, the group is a major partner in the GCash mobile wallet platform.

During the company’s Customers’ Day in the Philippines, executives of Ant Group Digital Technologies presented their latest digital security solutions before the Bank Marketing Association of the Philippines (BMAP) and chief technology officers of the country’s leading banks.

“We want to support our partners in the international market and enable them to provide safer, more convenient and more reliable services to their customers. The market in the Philippines has significant potentials,” said Zhang Yi, solutions architect at Ant Group Digital Technologies.

“For example, the banking industry’s robustness is very impressive particularly given the rapid growth of the financial technology (fintech) sector in the country.”

He said the company is bullish on the Philippine market due to the country’s responsiveness to digital technology, which played a critical role in delivering service to consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Potential partners include digital banks, fintechs and insurance companies and others that would like to offer online services which require electronic know-your-customer (eKYC) solutions. mPass, the company’s mobile development solution,  helps companies build new super apps or improve the performance of existing apps.

“We look forward to helping partners, including SMEs to operate their businesses online with ease,” Zhang Yi said.

Major e-wallet operators and financial institutions including GCash in the Philippines, TnGD and Maybank in Malaysia, Dana in Indonesia, TrueMoney in Thailand and Mandiri Bank in Indonesia have been using ZOLOZ’s eKYC solutions to serve their customers.

The adoption of  eKYC solutions helps clients reduce end-user authentication time from days to around three minutes, while improving the authentication success rate from 65 percent to above 90 percent.

One  of the new functions, the eKYC Blacklist Management can conduct real-time risk mining  enabling an organization to protect itself from illicit use of its products and services.

Other new security solution and features introduced include the Identity Network module, the NFC Passport Reader, and the one-stop risk control product Mobile Device Security.

Behavior-Captcha, meanwhile,  provides screen reading and other accessibility capabilities for digital service providers while Anti Money Laundering-Screen Automation (ZOLOZ Smart AML) taps artificial intelligence (AI) to complement manual verification to enable a hassle free experience.