Australian banks and ADIs are being attacked at the payment layer faster than legacy controls can react — scams on real-time rails, mule networks, account takeover, card and payment fraud. We build and run the systems that stop it. We don't just write a report; we find the holes the Big Four don't.
The threat has moved to the payment itself. A programme built to catch a stolen credential is structurally blind to a real customer being talked into paying — and to the mule waiting on the other end.
For most Australian banks, the fraud problem has inverted. The classic threat — a criminal moving money without the customer's knowledge — is now the smaller share of the loss. The larger share comes from customers being manipulated into sending money themselves, over rails that settle in seconds and cannot be recalled. Our deep-dive on APP scams and authorised push payment fraud walks through why, and what a defensible programme looks like end to end.
The move to the New Payments Platform, and the Osko and PayTo services on it, removed the batch-processing delay that once gave a bank hours to spot and reverse a suspicious transfer. When money is irrevocable within seconds, the point of control has to move upstream — to before the payment leaves. At the same time, a decade of hardened authentication pushed attackers off credentials and onto the human, so the fraudulent payment arrives with the right device, the right credentials and the right customer. There is no imposter to detect.
Investment, romance, impersonation and invoice-redirection scams where the genuine customer authorises the payment. The single largest and fastest-growing loss vector — and invisible to controls built to catch an imposter.
NPP, Osko and PayTo settle in seconds. Every scam, mule pay-through and fraudulent transfer now moves faster than a batch review can react, so interdiction has to happen in-flight, before settlement.
Credential stuffing, SIM-swap, phishing and remote-access takeover of genuine accounts — the unauthorised side of the problem that still demands device, behavioural and login-anomaly defences.
Card-not-present abuse, first-party fraud, chargeback and refund abuse, and testing attacks across your card and payment estate — leakage that quietly compounds without tuned detection.
Scam and fraud proceeds have to land somewhere. Mule accounts on the receiving side are where the money is recoverable — and where a bank has the most leverage to break the economics of every typology at once.
Privileged staff, third parties and compromised internal systems reaching the money flow. The hardest fraud to see, because it comes through legitimate access rather than the front door.
Everything below is delivered as working, integrated capability inside your stack. Advice is part of it, but the output is a system that stops fraud in production.
Detection built for a bank's money flows — rules, behavioural analytics and network analysis engineered together, so you catch first-party, third-party and payment fraud before it lands rather than reconciling it after.
Learn moreDesign, tune and validate ADI transaction monitoring so it scores every payment in-flight, catches the typologies that matter, and stops drowning analysts in false positives. We improve the platform you own before recommending you buy another.
Learn moreFollow the money across accounts, rails and blockchains. We reconstruct the flow of a fraud or theft and produce forensic evidence that supports recall, recovery and action — internally, with other banks, or in court.
Learn moreStop takeover at the front door: authentication and step-up design, bot and credential-stuffing defence, device and behavioural signals, and login-anomaly detection engineered into your platform, not bolted on.
Learn moreBank-grade application, cloud and infrastructure security, penetration testing and red-team exercises across the systems that move and hold funds. Because we build, we find the holes a report-only reviewer walks past.
Learn moreBespoke fraud engines, monitoring and tracing platforms, risk-scoring services and interdiction tooling — engineered for your rails and integrated with your stack. Built to run in production, not to sit on a shelf.
Learn moreForensic investigation of incidents, insider activity and organised fraud, with rapid recall requests, downstream account freezing and cross-bank coordination to recover what can still be reached.
Learn moreThe through-line is engineering. A scam-detection model is not a bigger card-fraud model — it has to reason about the customer's own baseline, the destination of the payment and the network around it, and drive a decision inside the settlement window: proceed, warn, add friction, step up, hold or block. That only works if someone can build it into the payment flow and tune it against live traffic. That is what we do.
And because we sit on both ends of every scam — as the sending institution and, for the mule, as the receiving one — we treat mule detection as a network problem, not an account problem. In isolation a mule looks ordinary; on the graph of accounts, devices and money flows, the structure becomes visible. Attacking the receiving side breaks the economics of investment scams, romance scams and impersonation at the same time.
A large advisory firm hands you a maturity assessment and an invoice. We hand you a working control. The difference shows up in production.
We write the detection engineering, integrate it and tune it. The engagement ends with a capability running in your stack — measured on interdiction and false-positive burden, not on slide count.
No platform to sell you. We make the monitoring, fraud and case-management software you already own actually work, and only recommend new tooling when the gap genuinely can't be closed in what you have.
Account takeover, penetration testing and real-time payment fraud are the same problem from different ends. Handling both means the gaps between them — usually where the loss hides — don't fall through.
From a single monitoring tune for a customer-owned bank to a full real-time interdiction build for a major. On retainer, by project, or on call when an incident hits.
The Australian direction on scams has moved decisively toward shared responsibility — coordinated, ecosystem-wide, act-across-the-journey. The practical message for a bank is that you are now expected to have controls at every stage of the payment lifecycle, evidence they are tuned and effective, and a response capability that engages before the money is gone. Waiting to reimburse after the fact is neither good economics nor an adequate answer. AML and CTF obligations sit alongside all of this, and we support them when you need it — but for a bank the sharper edge is the fraud and security build itself, and that is where we lead.
Tell us how money moves through your bank and where it hurts. We'll show you where you stand, what to fix first, and — if it's the right call — build it with you. See what we do, review how we're engaged, or talk to a specialist.
We build and run them. Financial Crime Advisory is an engineering-led firm: we design, code and integrate fraud engines, real-time transaction monitoring, tracing tooling and account-takeover defences into your stack, then tune them against live traffic. Advice is part of the work, but the deliverable is a working system that stops fraud, not a slide deck that recommends one.
Yes, and that is often the highest-value first move. Most ADIs already own a monitoring or fraud platform that is under-tuned, drowning analysts in false positives, or missing whole typologies. We validate the model logic, rework rules and thresholds, add behavioural and payee-aware signals, and cut false positives so the system catches what matters. We are vendor-independent, so we improve the platform you have before recommending you buy another.
Real-time rails such as NPP, Osko and PayTo settle in seconds, so the point of control has to move upstream, to before the payment leaves. We build in-flight transaction scoring, risk-based holds and step-up, confirmation-of-payee style name checking, dynamic warnings and receiving-side mule detection, so high-risk payments are stopped or challenged within the settlement window rather than chased after the money is gone.
Yes. Because we are build-led, our security work is bank-grade: application, cloud and infrastructure security, penetration testing and red-team exercises, secure architecture and hardening across the systems that move and hold funds. Fraud and cyber are the same problem viewed from two ends, so we cover both and find the holes a report-only reviewer misses.
No. Mutuals, customer-owned banks, credit unions and non-bank lenders face the same scam, mule and account-takeover threats as the majors but with smaller teams and tighter budgets. We scope the build to your size — a focused monitoring tune, a targeted fraud engine, or a real-time interdiction capability — so you get bank-grade protection without a big-four programme cost.
Whether you're building real-time interdiction, tuning ADI transaction monitoring, or hardening the systems that move funds, we'll tell you where you stand and build what's missing.