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March has been one to celebrate at Synctera! We announced an $18.6M extension to our Series A funding, welcomed our new CRO, Leigh Gross, and attended FinTech Meetup – all while building and launching a bunch of new products and features! 

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This month’s product updates

We launched new AML Case Reporting and made improvements to how customers and banks assess customer risk and perform due diligence

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New AML Case Reporting

This month we are spotlighting our new AML Case Reporting dashboards. These visual summaries help operations teams understand the statuses of AML cases and which rules triggered the cases. Bank partners also have access to this – across all their partner programs, which helps them holistically evaluate their risk exposure. 

These dashboards make trends easy to spot and alerts users when there are increases in rules being triggered – e.g., there has been a significant increase in transactions originating from high risk geos or customers are excessively withdrawing from ATMs. 

Our new AML Reporting dashboards are part of our greater commitment to transparency in risk management and compliance oversight for both customers and bank partners. We welcome our customers and banks to login to see the new dashboards in action.

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Customer Risk Rating (CRR)

CRR is an algorithm that calculates the risk score of consumers based on a set of guidelines provided by our bank partners. This new feature is a quick way for our banks to assess customer risk for AML purposes, and it’s done automatically based upon customer due diligence data points.

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Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) Endpoints

New EDD Endpoints collect additional data fields from customers, businesses, accounts, and transactions. Employment income, industry, and transaction purpose are examples of such fields. This helps optimize our customer risk rating algorithm and gives compliance teams a better background of end-customers. Learn more here.

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We’ve revamped parts of the Synctera Console for ease-of-use and increased visibility into complex processes like reconciliation

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Synctera Cases Enhancements

We made significant UI performance and usability improvements to Synctera Cases. Examples include the ability to bulk close cases, consolidating and reducing the number of information request emails, and increasing the load speed of Synctera Cases.

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Detailed Reconciliation Snapshot Analysis

As complicated as reconciliation is, it is our goal to give users visibility into the process. Banks can generate real-time snapshots of the reconciliation process anytime they need. We’ve now enhanced this feature by allowing users to drill into the details of that snapshot. 

Additionally, open items that may require attention from banks or operations teams are now organized into categories by balances, simplifying workflows. 

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Marketing Incentive Principal Reporting 

“Marketing incentives" is defined by Synctera as the money a bank pays to our customer for bringing end-customers to the bank partner. This update gives customers more visibility into how their marketing incentives are calculated. Customers and bank partners can log into Synctera Insights to view.

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Our customers now have more control over card programs with new and improved security features as well as cross-border controls

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Card 3 Domain Secure (3DS)

3DS is a security protocol, backed by the major card networks, that adds a layer of security for online card transactions by prompting cardholders to pass a challenge. 

On the issuing side, our customers can either use the default challenges or create their own challenge based on predetermined rules via the 3DS gateway.

Some issuer benefits of 3DS include reduced fraud risk, fewer chargebacks, and improved transaction acceptance. Read more here. 

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3DS for External (non Synctera-issued) Cards

On the acquiring side, 3DS is also mandated for Instant Account Funding (AFT) consumer programs. In this scenario, the customer is the merchant and by authenticating the cardholder through 3DS, they can shift the liability for certain types of chargebacks back to the issuer. See how to implement it here.

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Card Authorization Gateway Improvements

We’ve improved Card Authorization Gateway by adding additional fields to the authorization gateway, mainly fields that our customers can use for fraud prevention such as POS data. Learn more here.

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Cross-Border Transaction Controls

Controls for cross-border card transactions are now available. Cross-Border Transaction Controls allow our customers to identify cross-border transactions, set acceptance criteria, or decline these transactions altogether. Additionally, our customers can now charge cardholders cross-border transaction fees.

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New limits and approval features give bank partners more control over risk and liquidity

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ACH Daily Transaction Limits at the Partner Level

Bank partners can now configure daily limits for ACH. 

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Account Level Limits

Bank partners can now configure account-level transactional limits for accounts deemed risky. Learn more about limit controls here.

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Virtual spend cards are now available in Canada!

Card tokenization now allows for virtual spend cards to be added to Apple Pay and Google Pay for Canadian cardholders. End-customers can pay conveniently and securely with just their smartphone. 

US digital wallet tokens for Apple Pay and Google Pay have already been released.

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In case you missed it:

• The launch of SyncteraPay: Allows our customers to work with any payment provider and have all transaction information centralized and seamlessly integrated into the Synctera Ledger.  
• Fees and Rewards API now available: In this guide, we show you how to charge different types of fees, such as ATM fees or monthly subscriptions and offer rewards, like cash back on certain types of purchases.

For technical updates, check out our developer changelog.