How Blockchain & AI Can Together Fight Fraud Risks: Building Resilience, Not Just Convenience
By Anuj Khurana
Banks, NBFCs, and insurers are exposed to complex fraud typologies that exploit gaps in legacy controls and bypass traditional detection systems, making them harder to trace. These threats — from synthetic identity fraud and insider attacks to complex schemes — have become more sophisticated, automated, and organised in hiding illegal transactions underneath multiple layers. Therefore, the response to fraud risks has to be equally dynamic and driven by stringent risk controls.
AI and blockchain are powerful technologies for fraud prevention with a promise to offer an intuitive, more robust defence against financial crime.
Why Traditional Controls Are Falling Short
The rise of real-time payments, digital onboarding, and API-led ecosystems has expanded the surface area for fraud. Today’s fraud risks are far more advanced, persistent, and systemic than the phishing scams and unauthorised access attempts of the past.
In particular, Generative AI is being weaponised by fraudsters to launch a new wave of hyper-realistic, hard-to-detect threats. Criminals exploit these technologies to clone voices, forge documents, generate deepfake videos, and create synthetic identities that pass onboarding checks.
Role Of AI In Fraud Detection & Prevention
AI is no longer a “nice to have” — it’s becoming central to fraud operations. Banks are deploying AI models to detect transaction anomalies, assess behavioural patterns, and identify threats proactively.
These tools don’t just detect red flags. They continuously learn from past fraud attempts and adapt to new attack vectors.
Similarly, AI can detect subtle patterns in synthetic identity fraud and flag high-risk profiles in real-time. During customer onboarding, it streamlines document verification and risk screening, enhancing fraud risk controls without compromising the user experience. In India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is already applying this approach.
In 2024, its innovation arm introduced MuleHunter.AI, a machine learning-based tool designed to help banks detect and disrupt mule accounts — those used by fraudsters to move illicit funds. This initiative marks a strategic use of AI to proactively combat fraud at scale and underscores the regulator’s recognition that next-generation risks require next-generation tools.
Blockchain Builds Trust Into Financial Systems
Blockchain, meanwhile, tackles the foundational issue of trust. Its tamper-proof, transparent nature makes it ideal for ensuring the integrity of financial data, especially in high-risk workflows like trade finance, digital lending, or cross-border payments.
Using blockchain-ledger systems, banks can ensure that every transaction is time-stamped, verifiable, and immutable. Smart contracts automate rule enforcement, reducing manual checks, errors, and the chances of insider compromise. Blockchain also facilitates secure information sharing between financial entities, without compromising data privacy. This is particularly useful in preventing fraud across co-lending arrangements, syndication networks, or shared service models.
How AI & Blockchain Complement Each Other
The real power lies in combining AI with blockchain’s integrity. When AI systems are fed with clean, tamper-proof data from blockchain ledgers, their insights become sharper and more actionable. Conversely, blockchain systems become more dynamic when enhanced with AI-based monitoring and anomaly detection.
We’ve already seen this play out in areas like KYC remediation, fraud analytics, and cross-border settlement networks. Banks are now integrating blockchain-backed records into AI-powered transaction monitoring tools, enabling continuous oversight, faster exception handling, and improved regulatory reporting.
Building Resilience
The banking sector has already proven its digital maturity through innovations like UPI and account aggregation. The next leap is building resilience, not just convenience. AI and blockchain are the natural next steps in that journey.
As fraud risks evolve, financial institutions that proactively modernise their fraud architecture will gain operational efficiency, regulatory confidence, and customer trust. The message is clear — it’s time to move from reactive fraud management to proactive fraud resilience.
(The author is the Co-Founder & CEO of Anaptyss)
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