Fraud Prevention & AML FAQ
Find answers to the most common questions about fraud prevention, AML compliance, chargebacks, account takeover protection and how SEON helps businesses detect and prevent financial crime.
Fraud Prevention & AML
If your business operates online, processes digital payments or onboards customers remotely, implementing robust fraud prevention software is essential. Fraud rarely announces itself, and while high chargeback rates can be a clear indicator, many losses remain hidden until a real-time fraud detection system is put in place.
Businesses operating in high-risk sectors, such as fintech, digital banking, payments, iGaming, eCommerce and online lending, are particularly vulnerable to fraudulent activities. Additionally, if you verify customers remotely during onboarding, monitor activity, login or transactions, or if you frequently encounter challenges such as account takeovers, synthetic identity fraud and multi-accounting schemes, a dedicated fraud prevention solution is crucial.
For organizations in regulated markets, anti-money laundering (AML) compliance is mandatory, making fraud and risk prevention indispensable. Ultimately, if your fraud losses are escalating faster than your revenue growth, fraud prevention is no longer merely an option — it’s a core enabler of sustainable business growth.
Many legacy fraud management systems rely on static data or fragmented tools, which are insufficient to combat the sophisticated, dynamic nature of modern fraud, especially when bad actors leverage AI. Today, effective fraud and risk management demands real-time, contextual intelligence.
SEON significantly enhances fraud management capabilities by enriching data from over 900 first-party signals — including email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses and device information — all in real time. This enables early identification of synthetic identities, bot activity and complex fraud rings. The platform combines advanced rule-based with AI-driven risk scoring to provide comprehensive risk assessments.
Unifying fraud and AML workflows into a single platform makes operations more efficient, unlockingtransparent, explainable risk decisions. The SEON Scoring Engine evaluates transactions by analyzing signals and custom fields against rules, lists and models, to build a complete digital risk profile.
SEON employs a multi-layered approach to fraud detection, integrating several advanced techniques into a single, API-first platform to ensure comprehensive prevention and detection across the entire customer journey. These methods include:
Digital footprint analysis: Analyzing email, phone and IP data to identify multi-accounting, bonus abuse and synthetic identities by seeing if the information associated with what they share during registration comes from fake or disposable email and phone accounts, suspicious email domains, proxy and VPN usage and behavioral anomalies across 900+ first-party data signals.
Device intelligence: Collecting device-level signals to detect multi-accounting, account takeovers, emulator and spoofing activity and shared infrastructure across fraud and money laundering rings.
Real-time scoring engine: Every transaction is evaluated in real time using two risk scores: a rules-based fraud score and an AI-driven insights score. You configure how those scores map to transaction states (Approve, Review or Decline) based on your risk appetite, giving you full control over decisioning logic.
AI & machine learning: SEON combines rules-based scoring with AI risk scoring that analyzes 900+ first-party signals to detect patterns rules alone miss. The model retrains daily on your labeled data. AI also supports rule suggestions, AML hit review to flag false positives, alert summaries, explainable scores, natural language rule building and SAR narrative generation for reporting.
AML customer screening & payment screening: SEON screens individuals and transactions against sanctions, PEP, watchlists, crimelists and adverse media. Customer screening covers onboarding and ongoing monitoring, while payment screening checks senders and receivers in one API call, including banks via SWIFT/BIC and crypto wallets. You control fuzzy matching settings, and AML Search Profiles enable jurisdiction-specific screening without code.
SEON is designed to serve both technical and non-technical teams, ensuring broad usability across an organization. While initial integration typically requires engineering support — particularly for leveraging the Fraud API or the Orchestration SDK— day-to-day operations are primarily managed within SEON’s intuitive platform.
Fraud Analysts, Risk Managers, AML Compliance Officers, Payments Teams, Security Leaders, Product Managers and Data Science Teams use SEON’s platform as their Command Center to manage day-to-day operations. Within it, these teams can review transactions, manage rules, configure alerts, investigate cases and file regulatory reports.
Organizations needing strategic support can also engage SEON’s Managed Risk Services — a dedicated team of fraud and AML consultants who provide tailored strategy and proactive guidance.
Effectively reducing chargeback rates requires earlier detection of fraudulent activity and smarter automation. SEON offers a structured approach:
Screen at registration: Verify digital identities at the point of registration to proactively stop synthetic identities and fraud rings before they can transact.
Add real-time risk checks before payment: Implement fraud scoring and device intelligence before payment authorization to detect stolen cards and card testing attempts in real time, without introducing unnecessary friction for legitimate customers.
Automate high-confidence decisions: Leverage AI models and 240+ pre-built, customizable rules to automatically decline high-risk transactions, reducing manual review time and ensuring consistent decision-making.
Manage known fraudsters with lists: Blacklist and whitelist logic provide strict enforcement. Blacklists automatically block known fraudulent entities; whitelists expedite transactions for trusted customers. SEON empowers businesses to automate up to 95% of fraud checks, significantly reducing operational drag and lowering chargeback rates.
Catch repeat offenders with consortium intelligence: SEON’s fraudulent network transaction history surfaces whether an email or phone number has been linked to fraud across SEON’s global customer network, showing how many times it appeared, how many companies it impacted and when the most recent fraudulent transaction occurred. This helps you catch bad actors even if they’ve never touched your platform before.
Account Takeover (ATO) fraud often originates from compromised credentials and suspicious new-device activity. SEON provides strong mechanisms to prevent ATOs by:
Detecting logins from new or suspicious devices: The platform identifies unusual login attempts originating from devices that have not been previously associated with the user or exhibiting suspicious characteristics, including True Device ID to persistently track devices even after cookie clearing or browser changes.
Identifying VPNs, residential proxies and datacenter IPs: SEON detects tools fraudsters commonly use to mask their actual location and identity.
Detecting remote access and screen sharing: SEON identifies active remote access tools like AnyDesk and TeamViewer during sessions, a common indicator that a fraudster is controlling a victim’s device in real time.
Analyzing behavioral signals via device intelligence: By analyzing behavioral signals, the platform identifies anomalies in user interaction patterns that may indicate an ATO attempt.
Linking devices to previously flagged fraud: SEON connects current device activity to historical fraud records, flagging potential ATO attempts based on known fraudulent patterns. When a sudden change occurs in login context, such as location, device fingerprint or network, SEON instantly flags the risk for immediate protective action.
Bonus abuse and multi-accounting are prevalent issues, particularly within iGaming, fintech and eCommerce promotions. SEON effectively detects and prevents these activities by:
Linking shared devices with True Device ID: SEON’s True Device ID assigns a persistent, unique identifier to each device that survives cookie clearing, incognito mode, browser reinstalls and app reinstalls. This makes it significantly harder for abusers to reset their identity, with 30% better tracking accuracy than traditional browser hashes on the web.
Identifying repeated IP usage: SEON detects patterns of repeated IP addresses across accounts, signaling multi-accounting attempts.
Detecting social profile inconsistencies: By analyzing digital footprint signals associated with accounts, SEON uncovers inconsistencies that suggest fraudulent activity or the creation of fake profiles.
Mapping fraud rings via network analysis: Network analysis reveals connections between seemingly disparate accounts, exposing sophisticated fraud rings. Operators leverage SEON to detect multi-accounting at sign-up, preventing bonus abuse before payouts occur.
Yes. SEON now offers a full suite of KYC identity verification products, including ID document verification, liveness detection and proof of address — all built on SEON’s real-time fraud intelligence layer.
Unlike traditional IDV providers that focus solely on document authenticity, SEON verifies the intent behind every identity by enriching each identity verification check with real-time fraud signals from device intelligence, digital footprint and behavioral analysis. This means you’re not just confirming a document is real, you’re assessing whether the person presenting has meaningful intent.
A key differentiator is that SEON also leverages these signals to filter out high-risk users before they reach document verification, significantly reducing the cost and volume of KYC checks. The result is a layered compliance strategy: pre-KYC risk filtering feeds seamlessly into document-based KYC and AML workflows, all within a single platform.
Data and Analysis
SEON’s Fraud API is designed for modularity and flexibility. While requirements vary by use case, common and highly effective inputs include email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, device session data, transaction amounts, payment details and custom fields relevant to your operations.
SEON enriches these inputs with 900+ first-party signals in real time — meaning the more data you provide, the more accurate and granular the risk assessment becomes. Even a single data point, such as an email address, can surface significant fraud signals through SEON’s digital footprint analysis.
Every transaction submitted to SEON’s Fraud API undergoes a multi-stage risk scoring process. First, transaction data is enriched with real-time intelligence from 900+ digital footprint signals. That enriched data is then evaluated against a comprehensive set of customizable rules and lists. The fraud score is calculated by summing the values of all triggered rules, including default rules, custom rules and AI rule suggestions, and is normalized on a 0-100 scale. You configure state thresholds to determine whether each transaction is approved, sent for review or declined.
Alongside the fraud score, the AI Insights score uses AI models to analyze all available signals and detect complex patterns that rules alone may miss. It retrains daily on your labeled data and includes a full explanation of which signals pushed the score up or down.
A key advantage of SEON’s risk decisions is their full transparency, explainability, customizability and auditability. Fraud teams gain complete visibility into which rules were triggered and why and what signals impacted the AI insights score, eliminating the uncertainty associated with opaque black-box decision-making.
Yes. SEON is engineered to significantly automate both fraud and AML workflows, reducing operational overhead. The platform supports automated decision-making through configurable scoring thresholds, allowing businesses to set parameters for automatic approvals or declines. It also facilitates alert triggers for suspicious activity, robust case management for investigations and comprehensive regulatory reporting — including FinCEN filing support.
SEON provides continuous AML transaction monitoring alongside customer and payment screening. By integrating fraud and compliance teams within a unified system, SEON breaks down operational silos and minimizes friction across financial crime prevention workflows.
Integration & Usage
SEON is the command center for fraud prevention and AML compliance, trusted by over 5,000 companies globally — from high-growth fintechs to large enterprises. Key reasons to choose SEON:
– 900+ first-party data signals that go deeper than any data reseller or orchestrator, giving unmatched coverage and precision
– Coverage across the full customer journey — onboarding, login and transaction — for proactive, not reactive, protection
– Flexible analysis options: rules-based, AI-driven or a combination, with full transparency and no blackbox limitations
– 240+ pre-built rules to get started fast, with unlimited customization as your strategy evolves
– Average time from implementation to full operationalization: 14 days
– Unified fraud, KYC and AML platform — no middleware, no stitched-together tools
– Managed Risk Services for teams that want expert strategic support alongside the platform
– Easy integration via a single API, with hands-on support from 120+ R&D engineers and dedicated fraud consultants
SEON embodies the principle that fraud prevention should safeguard revenue rather than restrict it to stop fraud, not growth.
Getting started with SEON is designed to be fast. Integrate through a single API, and your dedicated implementation team will guide you through every step, from configuring custom rules and defining score thresholds to optimizing for your specific fraud and compliance use cases. Most organizations are fully operational within 14 days.
To get started, speak with our team to walk through your requirements and see how SEON fits your workflow.
Basic functionality is accessible immediately after sign-up. You can run email, phone and IP checks directly in the platformwithin minutes of onboarding. For full API integration, deployment and integration setup typically takes around 14 days, depending on your existing tech stack and workflow requirements — significantly faster than middleware orchestration tools, which can take months.
SEON provides detailed integration documentation including an API reference, a technical knowledge base and hands-on support to ensure a timely and effective deployment.
Yes. SEON offers comprehensive fraud prevention services worldwide. Over 5,000 companies globally — across fintech, financial services, payments, iGaming, eCommerce and more — rely on SEON to protect their operations regardless of geography. SEON’s 900+ first-party signals are built for global coverage, and the platform is designed to adapt to diverse regulatory environments and risk landscapes.
SEON serves any business that faces online fraud risk. Core industries and use cases include:
Financial Services & Fintech — account fraud, AML compliance, onboarding, transaction monitoring
Payments — card fraud, chargebacks, card testing, PSR/PSD3 compliance
iGaming — bonus abuse, multi-accounting, AML player screening
eCommerce & Retail — payment fraud, account takeover, promotion abuse
Online Lending — synthetic identity fraud, application fraud, KYC
Telecommunications — SIM swap fraud, account takeover
SEON’s platform is versatile and adaptable — if your business onboards customers or processes transactions online, SEON can be configured to protect it.
SEON provides comprehensive, continuous support to its clients at no additional charge — including around-the-clock assistance during integration and ongoing operations. Dedicated support accelerates time-to-value and ensures your team can maximize SEON’s capabilities without interruption.
For teams seeking deeper strategic guidance, SEON’s Managed Risk Services are available as a paid add-on, offering expert fraud consultants who provide tailored strategy, proactive monitoring insights and hands-on support beyond standard product assistance.
Pricing and Billing
Both pricing models have advantages and disadvantages. We believe in the micro-fee model to avoid any clash of interest between client and provider. In the chargeback model, the provider’s interest is to decline even slightly risky transactions, causing unaccounted revenue loss for the client.
You can read our blog post about comparing micro-fee and chargeback models or download our guide to help you decide between buying or building fraud prevention systems, if you need more information.
Yes. SEON offers automated chargeback management. When a dispute occurs, the solution automatically collects and enriches evidence using SEON’s transaction data and your customer’s historical transaction history, including matches against Visa CE3.0 criteria, to build the strongest possible case. Disputes are managed automatically, and you can track trends, statuses and recovered revenue from a single dashboard.
The default payment option is card payment. Based on a special agreement we can support other payment options as well.
