Scuudu’s Artificial Intelligence Enabled Solution — ‘WyreWolf’ would transform Nigeria’s Financial Services Sector
Scuudu is a startup growing from Genesys Tech Hub’s Research and Development Lab. The startup which kicked off operations in 2019, dreams to change the Nigerian tech story for good through avant-garde technologies. So far, Scuudu has worked on solutions leveraging Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.
In a recent hackathon organized by Financial Services Innovators (FSI) in partnership with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and others, the Scuudu team without any doubt demonstrated the potency of WyreWolf as a legitimate solution to wire fraud and other types of financial frauds in Nigeria. This earned them not just the admiration of the high-end panel which was made up of key players from the tech and financial services industries, but also a prize.
WyreWolf is a fraud detection and prevention system that makes use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to flag irregular transactions. The system is of utmost need given the continuous rise in financial and wire frauds in Nigeria and beyond. WyreWolf is built to become every user’s security alert. Just like a security dog, it serves as an alert system that triggers off at the sight of any suspicious movement.
The solution leverages Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to create a haven for financial transactions. WyreWolf makes use of Knowledge Graphs and Natural Language Processing. Information extracted is fed to the Knowledge Graphs which are used for decision making. Natural Language Processing (using LDA) is also used to analyze geographical data. The system uses an inbuilt metric called the S-Indicator to measure the likelihood of a transaction being fraudulent.
In simple terms, how it works is that WyreWolf collects data of a user’s transactions over a long period. Through the data, it recognizes the pattern of the user’s transactions and any transaction that violates this pattern is flagged. For instance, if a user has for the past one year withdrawn NGN 20,000 every week; any transaction that is above this in a particular week would be flagged. The concept is that any irregular transaction which falls outside the user’s pattern of transaction would be flagged. When a transaction is flagged, the user is notified through a personal SMS or voice call to authenticate the transaction and continue. A personal SMS would prompt the user to reply with a security code before the transaction is approved. The voice call makes use of voice recognition technology to verify the user and approve the transaction. This also applies to transactions that are initiated from an unusual location.
The application is built to be an interphase between bank transactions and end-users. The implication is that the financial institutions would integrate WyreWolf API into their systems as a security check for every transaction. WyreWolf aims to cut drastically the over N15 billion lost by banks and individuals through frauds annually.
Genesys Tech Hub operates from Enugu, Southeast Nigeria, and Scuudu is one of the many offsprings of the Hub’s effort to stamp Southeast Nigeria in the World Map of tech startups incubating clusters. The Hub which started operations 4 years ago has so far graduated over 300 young software developers and trained over 1800 tech enthusiasts, funded 8 startups and supported over 145 SME businesses.
Scuudu is actualizing the Genesys and Nigerian dream. The team members are in high spirits and maintain their resolve to transform the society through technology.
