The new reality: instant payments, instant risk

As published in the Fintech Futures. 

The shift to real-time payment rails such as FedNow, RTP, and SWIFT MX has fundamentally altered the compliance landscape. With money movement now measured in milliseconds rather than hours, financial institutions, fintechs, and payment processors can no longer rely on legacy screening tools designed for batch-processing. Instead, compliance teams must deliver instantaneous screening powered by contextual risk intelligence—parsing structured payment data (such as ISO 20022), detecting aliases or hidden risk signals, and adjudicating transactions in real time.  

The article highlights key vulnerabilities: older screening engines struggle with high-velocity flows and complex data formats, card-based payments remain a “blind spot” due to inconsistent fields under ISO 8583, and false positives can flood compliance teams when rigid matching logic fails. Ultimately, modern AML/payment screening are a strategic enabler rather than a constraint. Institutions that invest in real-time, intelligent, and flexible risk infrastructure will be best positioned to manage compliance risk while scaling payment volume. 

Read the article