Zapp partners Featurespace to fight fraud in m-payments

Zapp announced a five-year agreement with Featurespace to provide real-time fraud protection for its mobile payment customers. Zapp is a UK-based mobile payments developer and plans to launch its 'Pay by bank app' Paymark this autumn, so individuals can make payments straight from their bank app on mobile devices. Zapp will deploy a fraud monitoring and alerting system based on Featurespace's ARIC adaptive behavioural analytics engine to protect its users against fraud in real time. The engine is powered by machine learning adaptive algorithms, which run in real time and spot subtle changes at individual account level. Following launch, the system will process thousands of events every second for customers of Zapp's banking partners, including Barclays. Featurespace was created out of Cambridge University's Engineering Department and is backed by investment from Nesta, Imperial Innovations, Betfair, and Cambridge Angels.