Alipay Unveils Enhanced AI-Powered Risk Engine AlphaRisk to Safeguard Businesses Amid Accelerating Digitization

Alipay, the world’s leading open digital lifestyle platform operated by Ant Financial Services Group (“Ant Group”), organized the inaugural Alipay Risk & Security Tech Launch 2020, showcasing its latest technologies that help businesses adapt to digital transformation in a secure way.

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At the event, Alipay unveiled the enhanced version of the AI-powered risk engine AlphaRisk, the core of its world-leading risk and security technologies. Backed by AlphaRisk, Alipay’s fraud loss rate has been kept under 0.64 in 10 million. This means that for every $10 million worth of payments, fraud induced loss is less than $0.64, which is significantly lower than industry average.

“The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation across the globe. Businesses and services which can adapt quicker to this growing trend will be in a stronger position to serve customers. Meanwhile, rapid digitization also comes with new challenges in risk and security,” said Dr. Zhao Wenbiao, Vice President of Ant Group and Chief Scientist of Alipay Security Lab in his keynote speech. “Security, more now than ever, has to be the core infrastructure for digital businesses to ensure operational safety and reliability, while continuously improving user experience and performance.”

With four main features, namely AI Detection, Evolution, Perception and Auto Pilot, AlphaRisk offers best-in-class real-time risk detection and management capabilities. It automatically analyzes fraud attempts and patterns to adjust risk profiles, and takes countermeasures on the fly. It is also able to detect new fraud patterns and automatically intervene.

The enhanced AlphaRisk is able to respond to new risks detected within one second and complete automatic risk profile adjustments within one day through self-learning and model auto-refit. Its Auto Pilot feature integrates more than 200 algorithms, which enables the system to automatically apply the best risk management strategy while ensuring seamless user experience.

“Alipay’s utmost priority is to build a safe and trusted digital lifestyle platform for the 1.2 billion users we serve with our global partners worldwide,” said Dr. Zhao. “Through opening up our technologies and close collaboration, we plan to further our support for partners and merchants by empowering their risk and security infrastructure and enhancing their anti-fraud capabilities. We look forward to working with our partners together to promote the sustainable development of digital economy.”

In addition to safeguarding user accounts, in 2019 alone, Alipay helped over 10,000 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and merchants deploy AlphaRisk. It has protected over RMB30 billion in funds from promotion abuse, a key challenge on the rise for digital businesses. In addition to the financial costs, promotion abuse can also damage brand reputation and the ability to acquire and retain real customers.

Alipay’s risk engine and technology have also been adopted by leading mobile financial services providers in the region, including GCash, the leading mobile wallet in the Philippines. GCash currently has over 20 million registered users who access the mobile wallet for its payment, remittance and financial services, and over 75,000 QR merchant partners.

Speaking at the event, Ms Peach Lucienne Orbe, Head of Risk Decision Center at GCash shared: “At the beginning of our growth journey, we were facing challenges in adoption due to consumers’ lack of trust and security concerns. To overcome it, we have to tackle fraud and promotion abuses. The risk engine allows for real-time protection of transactions and risk intervention through API. Its authentication platform also supports dynamic verification for efficient fraud prevention without hampering user experience. As a result, we have significantly decreased promotion abuse to less than 1%, and improved our security capability. With these risk capabilities and confidence we have gained through such technologies, we were able to launch GCash Customer Protect last September, a program that ensures money-back guarantee for unauthorized transactions.”

In China, thanks to AlphaRisk helping to keep the fraud loss rate low, since 2005, Alipay has been protecting its users with a 100% money back protection scheme in the unlikely event of unauthorized account use.

Alipay Risk & Security Tech Launch 2020 event video is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdAoJcuSqjQ , with English subtitles.

About Alipay

Alipay is the world's leading open digital lifestyle platform operated by Ant Group. In 2004, Alipay launched as an escrow service to address the issue of trust between online buyers and sellers in the early days of e-commerce in China. Continuously innovating to bring mobile payment to the world, Alipay serves more than 1.2 billion users worldwide together with its global e-wallet partners as of June 30, 2019.

Alipay has evolved from a payment tool to become a one-stop digital lifestyle platform. Through an open platform strategy, it introduces service providers from sectors such as local living, public services, and financial services, to bring consumers a more comprehensive experience. Along the way, it helps merchants digitalize their operations, promoting digital transformation in the service industry.

Alipay actively shares its financial technology experience with overseas partners, in order to bring inclusive financial services to the world. Working with more than 250 overseas financial institutions, Alipay created online payment channels for buyers and sellers in more than 200 countries and regions. When Chinese people travel abroad, they can pay directly using their mobile phones, and receive dedicated local merchant services through Alipay. These services have been introduced in 56 countries and regions. Tax reimbursement via Alipay is supported in 35 countries and regions, and Alipay supports 27 different currencies. In addition, foreign tourists and foreigners living in China can also use Alipay for mobile payments in the country.

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Contact information

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Mr. Le Shen
Email: shenle.sl@antfin.com