FREEMARKET STRENGTHENS PAYMENTS COMPLIANCE WITH ADVANCED MONITORING AND INSIGHTS AI

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Summary

Freemarket, a global payment processing company specialising in seamless cross-border FX payments, has expanded its partnership with Napier AI to enhance its financial crime compliance framework.

Freemarket has accelerated transaction approval times by 77%, reduced false positives, and scaled transaction volumes by approximately 1,230% year-on-year without increasing financial crime headcount. The strengthened partnership ensures safe, scalable money movement and equips analysts with AI-driven insights to manage increasing transaction volumes securely.

We are delighted to be working with Napier AI to enhance our transaction monitoring capabilities as we continue to expand globally. Using their AI- driven technology helps us strengthen our compliance framework, reduce false positives, and scale our payment checks while maintaining the highest standards of regulatory oversight. As we enter new markets, having trust and confidence in our screening processes is vital to ensure our compliance processes evolve in line with global growth.

Jamie King

Head of Compliance & MLRO

Challenge

Freemarket provides secure global payment processing and FX capabilities for businesses moving money across borders. Between November 2024 and November 2025, the business experienced a 1,230% increase in transaction volumes, significantly increasing exposure to complex and evolving financial crime typologies.
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Prior to optimisation, 18.49% of transactions were generating alerts, all of which required real-time manual approval, creating operational strain and the risk of customer delays.

With ambitious plans to expand into new global markets, Freemarket required a technology partner capable of supporting greater transaction volumes while enhancing oversight and maintaining trust in its payment processes.

Solution

Freemarket selected Napier AI’s advanced transaction monitoring as its primary system for identifying financial risks across its global payment flows.
Built for scale and agility, the platform enables Freemarket to maintain high standards of regulatory oversight while supporting continuous growth.

A major milestone in the partnership was a comprehensive ruleset redesign and threshold recalibration, undertaken collaboratively in early 2025.

A core capability is Insights AI – a feature that applies AI-driven analytics to enable earlier detection of hidden threats. By analysing suspicious behaviours, Insights AI identifies behavioural anomalies by comparing activity to global, local, or peer group norms — highlighting risks that fall outside typical transaction patterns.

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The ambition was:

- More accurate and explainable risk

- Reduced false positives

- Scalable compliance workflows to support global expansion

- Increased analyst productivity

- Enhanced trust in decision-making across cross-border payments

This would help to keep global money movement secure as Freemarket's payment volumes and market footprint grow.

Results

The implementation of Napier AI’s transaction monitoring and Insights AI capabilities enabled Freemarket to significantly strengthen its payments compliance operations while supporting business growth. The platform improved the firm’s ability to detect suspicious activity by using AI-driven behavioural analysis to identify anomalies in transaction patterns. This reduced noise from irrelevant alerts and helped compliance teams focus on genuinely high-risk cases.

As a result, Freemarket enhanced the efficiency and scalability of its compliance processes, enabling the company to handle increasing transaction volumes and expand into new international markets without compromising regulatory oversight. The solution also reduced false positives and streamlined investigation workflows, allowing analysts to make faster, more informed decisions while maintaining strong anti-money laundering controls.

✓ 77% faster transaction approval times

The redesigned monitoring framework reduced average transaction approval time by 77%, enabling analysts to focus on genuinely high-risk activity while maintaining strong regulatory oversight.

✓ Substantial reduction in false positives

Alert volumes fell from 18.49% of transactions to 9.59%, with only 2.95% of alerted transactions now requiring manual approval, compared to all alerts previously. This significantly reduced unnecessary reviews while preserving detection quality.

✓ Improved SLA performance and customer experience

Transactions processed outside internal SLAs fell by 73%, dropping from 0.11% to 0.03%, resulting in more predictable processing and reduced customer friction.

✓ Scalable growth without additional headcount

Freemarket successfully scaled transaction volumes by approximately 1,230% year-on-year and now supports clients transacting at up to 3,000 transactions per day, without increasing financial crime headcount — delivering measurable operational efficiency.

77%

faster transaction approval times

48%

reduction in alert volumes

1,230%

increase in transactions screened

2.95%

of alerts now needing manual approval