Citi leveraging AI to ensure tighter controls in digital payments

MANILA, Philippines — Global banking giant Citi is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure tighter controls in payment initiation as it continues to be a champion for digital payments in the Philippines.

As the payment landscape evolves, Citi remains at the forefront of innovating and complementing industry innovations, as well as the developments made under the guidance of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Philippine Payment Management Inc.

Citi’s payment outlier detection tool identifies payment outliers, ensuring tighter controls in payment initiation.

To simplify operations in the Philippines, clients who avail of digital payments solutions may request for electronic generation of creditable withholding tax to be submitted to the beneficiary who can, in turn, leverage the documentation to substantiate its own tax returns.

Using PESONet, clients can also avail of physical collection of official receipts (OR), encouraging a seamless shift from paper-based check payments to digital payments when paying suppliers.

Citi Philippine treasury and trade solutions head Arlene Nethercott said the bank continues to drive value adding digital solutions and works with the industry and the regulators to enable key industry roll outs in the space of digital payments.

“Citi in the Philippines delivers an end to end digital client experience from onboarding, transaction processing of payments and collections, including trade financing solutions, to self-service enabled client experience,” Nethercott said.

Deven Somaya, ASEAN and Singapore treasury and trade solutions head (interim) at Citi, was in the Philippines to participate in the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) sponsored SwiftGo industry event held recently.

The event was participated in by SWIFT experts and finance industry colleagues who engaged in a discussion of topics around payments and impact on businesses.

SwiftGo is a capability that Citi subscribes to which allows small value payments to be transferred cross-border in a seamless and frictionless manner.

Somaya said the miniaturization of payments and corresponding increase in payment volumes continues to be a driving trend in the evolution of digital payments.

“To support clients’ needs for future commerce, banks have to be able to move money and facilitate transactions in close to real-time while ensuring security. To do so, Citi continues to make investments in our digital payment capabilities, including expanding our network to include alternate payment methods like mobile wallets and local instant payment schemes,” Somaya said.

Citi processes over P100 billion a month in outgoing payments under PESONet, making it number 1 in terms of outgoing payment value. Supporting the transition to digital payments, Citi provides differentiated domestic payments services across different areas providing security, efficiency, and simplification.