Google pitches AI to fight scams, fraud in PH

FILE – The Google logo is photographed at the Vivatech show in Paris, on June 15, 2023. Japan’s antitrust watchdog said Monday, April 22, 2024, that U.S. search giant Google must fix its advertising search restrictions affecting Yahoo in Japan. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)

Artificial intelligence (AI) can offer a “promising” opportunity to Philippine fintech firms to harness the power of such a technology not just to attract more customers but also to protect them from fraud, Google said.

While many fintech firms in the country use AI mostly for marketing purposes, Jackie Wang, country director of Google in the Philippines and Thailand, said these companies can also learn from their counterparts in other nations in using AI to detect and prevent financial crimes.

For instance, Wang said companies like British banking giant HSBC use AI in the UK and Hong Kong to detect suspicious activity and spot known money-laundering patterns of behavior.

“So this is another space that we see AI really playing a big role,” Wang told reporters.

“The Philippines has an opportunity to actually learn what’s happening and be able to counter it (fraud) even better,” she added.

Financial inclusion

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) previously identified the proliferation of scams and fraud as a major obstacle to achieving greater financial inclusion in the Philippines. The BSP had targeted to bring 70 percent of adult Filipinos to the formal financial system by 2023.

That said, the central bank is working on enhancing antifraud defenses to build Filipinos’ trust in the financial system. The BSP is currently developing an AI road map that would identify specific use cases of AI in financial institutions, including the technology’s potential to detect and prevent fraud. The AI road map is likely to be launched next year.

Wang said Google can offer products to local fintech firms to help them protect their customers from fraudsters. But she stressed that fighting scams would still require a whole-of-nation approach.“We also believe that it’s difficult for one company or one government to solve it,” she said.

“I really do believe it’s one of those problems where both private and public sectors and nonprofit organizations and law enforcement industry peers and different organizations really need to come together to help figure out how to continue to counter this,” she added. INQ