How Ratepay Is Scaling BNPL Solutions With AML & Screening Technology From Hawk

• Ratepay is Europe’s leading provider of white label Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) solutions, offering a customizable platform to retailers and other brands.
• The company wanted to strengthen its anti-financial crime compliance operation, particularly for AML in response to changes in a highly dynamic regulatory environment.
• Hawk rapidly implemented AML Transaction Monitoring and Payment Screening, tailored to Ratepay’s needs.
• The outcome: More true positives, greater operational scalability from streamlined workflows, and greater collaboration between Ratepay’s analysts and investigators.

About Ratepay

Ratepay enables seamless and secure purchasing processes for e-commerce merchants and their customers. The focus on white labeling allows merchants to retain control over customer data and communication and to highlight their own brands throughout the payment process. Ratepay GmbH was founded in December 2009 in Berlin and employs more than 200 people. It is part of the Nexi Group.

About Hawk

Hawk is the leading provider of AI-supported AML compliance and fraud prevention technology. With a modern tech stack and a collaborative approach, Hawk helps financial institutions to identify more financial crime while reducing false positives.

Solutions Used:

• Payment Screening
• AML Transaction Monitoring

The Challenges

As a fast-growing innovator in the payments space, Ratepay needed a flexible technology partner to strengthen its AML and screening operation. Specific objectives included:

• Managing complex transaction lifecycles from checkout to merchant payout

• Handling a wide range of customer risk profiles and compliance expectations

• Maintaining regulatory readiness while scaling operations efficiently

“So many providers don’t understand the level of flexibility that is needed to support us with our regulatory requirements. They can’t provide the agility that fintech companies need.” explains Denny Axt, Ratepay’s Director of Compliance & AML Officer.

What Hawk Delivered

Hawk’s modular platform and flexible approach has enabled Ratepay to rapidly implement improvements to its anti-financial crime operation and realize significant benefits quickly:

• Payment Screening: Ratepay implemented Hawk’s dynamic Payment Screening solution to screen transactions in real time against global sanctions lists. The results were impressive – a substantial decrease in false positives demonstrated that Ratepay is detecting only relevant sanctions risks with Hawk.
• AML Transaction Monitoring: Payment platforms must also monitor transactions to detect signs of money laundering. For BNPL providers, this might include suspicious cross country transactions, multiple accounts for the same merchant, or refund requests to the benefit of third-party accounts. Hawk’s AML Transaction Monitoring solution enables Ratepay to create and manage rules that detect these types of potentially illicit activity.

“For us at Ratepay, ‘transaction’ doesn’t just mean someone sending money from A to B. There are a lot of other points we need to monitor, and Hawk gave us that end-to-end visibility,” says Denny. “Again, that was because Hawk understands that we don’t function like a traditional bank and can adjust to meet our needs. Implementing Hawk has allowed us to uncover more relevant cases, so now the work we’re doing has real value.”

How Hawk Delivered

Hawk’s modular platform combines powerful customization with intuitive design. Ratepay’s analysts onboarded quickly thanks to a user-friendly interface, while engineering teams praised the detailed documentation and seamless API integration.

Custom rules could be created instantly, without needing external support, empowering Ratepay to respond in real time to evolving criminal tactics. Auditors also gained from centralized case management, with full traceability and easy data export.

Results

• Reduced false positives by 99% after replacing the previous solution with Hawk’s, shifting from a high-noise environment to one focused on meaningful alerts.
• Cut SAR filing time by approximately 50% by centralizing case documentation in Case Manager.
• New rules cover three times more patterns within existing resource capability, thanks to the elimination of manual processes.
• Greater visibility across complex transaction lifecycles and diverse risk profiles.

Coming Next: Scaling with AI

Ratepay is now planning to add Hawk’s AI technology to deliver two critical capabilities:

1. Anomaly detection – using AI to reveal novel, suspicious behavior that doesn’t fit into known patterns.
2. False positive reduction – using AI to help the team manage higher volumes of transactions as Ratepay grows, but without adding more resources.

Working Together

“Having a technology partner that really knows what they’re doing and anticipates your requirements...I can’t tell you how much easier that makes everything for us,” notes Denny. “I’d say this: if you’re looking for a partner who truly understands the regulatory space, listens to what you need, moves fast, and actually delivers – go with Hawk. The tech is strong, the people are great, and honestly, it just works.”

August 7, 2025