FinTech digital solution to prevent online payments to criminal traders

Governments and regulators set the rules of engagement for economic growth, environmental protection and funding of public services. Law enforcement agencies & the legal system ensures compliance.

The majority of good, legitimate businesses follow these rules. They assume their share of responsibility for employees and social impacts, and pay associated costs and taxes. They make considerable investment into innovation, IP protection and regulatory compliance. This drives growth, which in turn funds public services and wider economic competitiveness.

Criminal sellers and illicit traders do not follow the rules. They do not ensure product safety or legality, and do not pay tax, actual or social costs. They steal or negate the R&D investments of legitimate businesses, and undermine progress towards sustainability and economic. The revenues from illicit trade fund other criminal activities, rather than social good.

This is not a fair fight, and legitimate businesses, citizens, communities and economies are the losers. The winners are organised criminal gangs -- illicit trade is the biggest funding source of organised crime (Source: UN, Europol, UK Police). And crime has moved online during COVID-19, using mainstream delivery services and ecommerce platforms, making it harder to detect and intercept. The UK's National Crime Agency and Europol have documented an increase in cybercrime, online criminal selling, fraud and illicit trading of counterfeit goods directly linked to those exploiting the chaos of the Covid-19 crisis.

For post-COVID business recovery to be fair and sustainable, it is important that criminal sellers and illicit traders are detected and their unfair advantage over legitimate businesses is stopped.

Vistalworks are experts in online illicit trade detection. We've built an AI system to reduce consumer demand for illicitly traded goods and provide intelligence to better focus law enforcement resources (used by HMRC, Police Scotland, and Trading Standards Scotland).

This project brings a new capability to the business with global market potential, evolving our proposition from advisory to preventative, and introducing a completely new prototype technology that enables banks to block online payments to criminal sellers, and prevent the highest-risk transactions before they occur. This will reduce fraud, illegal financial flows and the associated service, refunds and chargeback costs.

We'll achieves this by focusing on criminal sellers at the point of online transaction, warning payments providers and payments processors so that they can block, investigate or decline high risk transactions.

Vistalworks has the potential to fuel sustainable economic recovery at a nationally and globally significant level, by reducing the 2019 $2.2trillion annual economic losses from illicit trade by up to £10billion per year and curbing the significant levels of climate-related emissions and pollution associated with black market sellers.

When COP 26 comes to our home city of Glasgow in 2021, it is our ambition to present a solution than can be used by the world to tackle illicit trade and directly reduce the associated economic, social and environmental harms.