Fraud prevention for European banks
Tieto Banktech helps European banks detect and stop fraud in real time across instant payments, cards and digital channels. Shared intelligence from more than 130 banks helps identify threats faster and reduce financial losses.
Tieto's proven financial crime defense
4.9B
Transactions monitored across European banks in 2025
1.1B EUR
In fraud prevented in 2025 — 3 times more than the year before
90%
Fraud detection rate, sustained consistently for 25 years
130+
European banks and financial institutions working with us
Fraud is moving faster
European banks face rising fraud pressure across instant payments, digital channels and account-to-account transactions. At the same time, operational costs and compliance demands continue to increase.
Fraud networks
adapt in real time
Fraud attacks across Europe are becoming faster, more automated and harder to detect. Fraud attempts on European banks rose 43% in 2024, following a 47% rise the year before, while social engineering scams increased 156% and digital wallet fraud surged 300%. According to the Tieto Banktech Payment Fraud Report 2026, detected fraud cases more than doubled from 2.65 per 100,000 transactions in 2022 to 5.57 in 2024. Criminals are now using AI, mule networks and social engineering to scale attacks across banks and payment channels.
SEPA Instant
changes fraud response
SEPA Instant moves money across Europe in seconds, with funds becoming irrevocable just as quickly, leaving banks only moments to detect and stop suspicious transactions. Legacy fraud systems built for batch processing and slower payment rails create gaps when adapted to real-time account-to-account payments, gaps that criminals can quickly exploit. Fraud prevention now needs to operate in real time across instant payment infrastructure.
False positives
drive operational cost
Financial crime compliance costs in EMEA reached €85 billion in 2024 and are growing 15% annually. Up to 80% of AML budgets go toward reviewing false positives, with analysts handling 50–100 mostly legitimate alerts daily. A typical mid-sized European bank spends €3–8 million a year on transaction monitoring, much of it wasted on false alerts, increasing costs, slowing investigations and driving analyst fatigue. Reducing false positives helps banks focus on genuine threats. Source: blog research, April 2026.
Fraud operations
need scale
Fraud and AML teams face growing pressure as attack volumes rise and specialist talent becomes harder to retain. Criminal networks now use the same mule accounts and scam tactics across multiple institutions, making it difficult for any single bank to see the full picture. At the same time, some AML teams report 25–40% annual staff turnover driven by repetitive false positive reviews. Shared intelligence and managed operations help banks scale financial crime prevention more efficiently.
Shared intelligence improves detection
Banks leading in financial crime prevention are sharing intelligence across institutions and borders, helping detect emerging fraud patterns faster. The EU’s new AML Regulation (Article 75) is now making this easier, not harder.
Shared signals
strengthen every bank
When suspicious behaviour is identified in one institution, anonymised intelligence can strengthen detection models across the wider network, dramatically reducing the time criminals have to exploit the same tactic elsewhere.
Modernisation without
full replacement
You don’t need to replace everything at once. Start with one module - fraud monitoring, AML, identity or managed operations - and expand over time, integrating alongside existing banking systems and workflows.
Better data means
fewer false positives
One connected platform across four capability areas. Start with one module or combine all four, with everything fully connected.
Detect fraud before funds move
Real-time fraud monitoring across cards, accounts, digital wallets and instant payments. With AI that learns from the collective intelligence of 130+ European banks.
Services:
- Card Transaction Monitoring
- Account Fraud Monitoring
- 3-D Secure Monitoring
- Digital wallet monitoring
- Mule detection
- Rogue merchant blocking
What changes for your team:
- 90%+ detection rate, and 76% of card fraud stopped with zero customer loss
- Fewer false positives, fewer good customers blocked unnecessarily
- Coverage across modern payment rails, not just legacy card networks
Reduce AML investigation workload
Transaction monitoring, case management, sanctions screening and regulatory reporting with AI that cuts false positives and surfaces real risks faster.
Services:
- AML transaction monitoring
- Customer due diligence
- Sanctions and watchlist screening
- AML case management
- Regulatory reporting
- AI-supported AML investigations
What changes for your team:
- Fewer false positive alerts to wade through each day
- All AML data, transactions, cases, reports, in one place
- AI-explained reasoning that holds up in front of regulators
Get onboarding right from the start
Reduce onboarding risk with identity verification, sanctions and PEP screening, and customer risk profiling from the first interaction.
Services:
- Digital identity verification
- Know your customer (KYC)
- AML screening
- Sanctions and PEP screening
- Customer risk scoring
- Strong customer authentication
What changes for your team:
- Fewer fraudulent accounts getting through at application
- Less friction for real customers, checks are proportionate to risk
- A risk profile that carries through the whole customer journey
Managed fraud operations
Our Defence Centre operates 24/7 as a managed fraud and financial crime prevention service. Your bank gets the outcome; we handle the operations.
Services:
- 24/7 Defence Centre
- BPO fraud operations
- AI tuning & rule management
- Investigation services
- 6-language customer support
- SaaS or fully managed
What changes for your team:
- 25–60% reduction in operational costs vs. building in-house
- Shared threat intelligence from 130+ European banks, updated constantly
- Predictable costs - choose SaaS, BPO, or a blend of both
Tieto - built for European banking
Designed around European payment fraud
Built around SEPA Instant, PSD2 and European fraud patterns from the start, our platform is designed for European payment rails, regulations and customer behaviour, covering APP scams, IBAN fraud and other regional fraud typologies that global, US-centric systems often miss.
Shared intelligence across 130+ institutions
Fraud patterns rarely stop at one institution, which is why our multi-tenant platform uses anonymised, GDPR-compliant network intelligence to strengthen fraud detection models across participating banks in near real time.
Flexible deployment models
Banks can deploy SaaS, fully managed services or hybrid operations depending on their operational needs, with delivery models that can evolve over time without replacing the platform. Our Defence Centre provides 24/7 support across multiple European markets, operating in 6 European languages and handling more than 170,000 fraud cases annually.
Explainable AI built for regulated banking
Our AI models are transparent and explainable, with traceable, auditable decisions designed for regulated banking environments. Since 2018, we’ve combined supervised AI models with expert-defined fraud profiles to document how decisions are made, while our upcoming Atlas Large Financial Model, which outperforms benchmarks by 60% in money laundering identification, follows the same principle: improving detection accuracy while supporting regulatory oversight.
Validate performance using your own data
Banks can validate detection performance using their own historical transaction data before deployment, rather than relying on synthetic benchmarks or cherry-picked scenarios. In 2025, we monitored 4.9 billion transactions, prevented €1.132 billion in fraud and stopped 76% of card fraud attempts with zero financial loss to customers, helping banks understand the operational and financial impact before rollout.
Talk to a fraud prevention expert
Talk to our fraud prevention specialists about reducing fraud losses, lowering false positives and improving AML operations across SEPA Instant and European payment channels. See how the platform can fit your bank’s existing systems and operating model.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Our solutions are modular. You can start with one capability, fraud detection, AML monitoring, identity checks, or managed operations, and build from there, on your own timeline. We regularly integrate alongside existing core banking and payment infrastructure. You won't be asked to rip anything out.
We run a multi-tenant platform shared by 130+ European banks. When one bank's data reveals a new fraud patter, either a new scam tactic, a mule network or a suspicious merchant cluster, that insight is anonymised and used to update detection rules and AI models for every bank on the platform.
No raw customer data is ever shared between banks. Intelligence is shared at the level of patterns, rules and risk signals, all within the boundaries of GDPR, AMLD and PSD2. The EU's new AML Regulation (Article 75) is designed to make exactly this kind of sharing easier.
Reducing false positives is one of our main focuses, because wasted analyst time on legitimate transactions is one of the biggest cost drivers in AML and fraud operations.
Our AI models are trained specifically on European transaction patterns rather than generic global data, which means they generate fewer irrelevant alerts from the start. The pooled intelligence from 130+ banks also improves scoring accuracy across the board. Banks that move their operations to us typically report 40–70% reductions in false positive rates. We're also developing our Atlas Large Financial Model, which outperforms current benchmarks by 60% in money laundering identification.
It depends on which modules you start with and your existing infrastructure. We have a dedicated onboarding team and have done this hundreds of times across 14+ European markets - Nordics, DACH, Iberia, Benelux and beyond. We can give you a realistic timeline based on your specific setup. In our experience, starting with a well-scoped first module typically moves faster than most banks expect.
Around 90% detection rate, maintained over 25 years. In 2025, our Defence Centre monitored 4.9 billion transactions on behalf of European banks, handled roughly 170,000 fraud cases, and stopped 76% of card fraud attempts with zero financial loss to the customer. Total fraud prevented was €1.132 billion, its more than three times the year before.
We're also happy to validate detection rates on your own historical data before you commit to anything.
Yes, often more so than for large banks. Our shared-service model means smaller institutions get access to the same fraud intelligence, the same AI models and the same 24/7 operational coverage as much larger ones - without needing large internal teams or expensive infrastructure. The cost of running and maintaining the platform is spread across the whole network.
Three options, and most clients use a mix:
- SaaS: You run the software yourselves with your own team. Full access to our platform and models; you manage the day-to-day operations.
- Managed service (BPO via our Defence Centre): We handle fraud monitoring, case management, investigations and customer contact on your behalf - 24/7, across 6 European languages.
- Hybrid: Most common. You retain oversight and handle specific areas yourselves; we take care of the rest. Banks that outsource operations to us typically save 25–60% in operational costs compared to running the equivalent in-house.
Financial crime insights for banks
AI-led detection, human-led decisions
As financial crime becomes more advanced, fraud prevention must become more precise.
Fraud Fighters in Mo i Rana: Real-time banking security
While most of us are asleep, Tieto Banktech’s Defence Centre in Mo i Rana stands vigilant - combining human expertise and AI-driven analytics to stop payment fraud before it reaches end-customers.
Our new name honours our Nordic roots, but our focus extends far beyond. Tieto means knowledge. We turn that knowledge into results that matter.
