AI for Fintech and Banking

AI for fintech that decides in seconds, not days.

Manual credit reviews that take days, fraud detected after the transaction settles, and loan documents processed by hand: these are the operational bottlenecks that cost fintech businesses money and slow down the customer experience.
We build AI systems for fintech startups, digital banks, lending platforms, and payment processors: credit risk scoring models, real-time fraud detection, document extraction for loan origination, AI customer support, regulatory reporting automation, anti-money laundering anomaly detection, and algorithmic trading signal generation. Every system is scoped against your data and a specific business outcome.

  • Credit risk models trained on your applicant data that score loan decisions in seconds, not days

  • Fraud detection that flags suspicious transactions in real time before settlement, not after

  • Document extraction that reads and structures income statements, bank statements, and ID documents without manual re-keying

  • AML anomaly detection that surfaces unusual transaction patterns for your compliance team to review

Recent outcomes

AI OCR · Fintech operations

20K+ daily transactions

Built an AI document processing pipeline for a gas station management platform that eliminated manual data entry across 20,000+ daily transactions.

4.9
on Clutch
See our work

The problem

Sound familiar?

  • Are your credit decisions taking days because analysts are manually reviewing applications that a model could score in seconds?

  • Are you discovering fraud after the transaction has settled, or does your system surface suspicious signals in real time?

Short answer

RaftLabs builds AI systems for fintech startups and digital banks across the US, UK, Europe, Canada, GCC, South Africa, and Southeast Asia: credit risk scoring, real-time fraud detection, AML anomaly detection, and document extraction. Systems are scoped at a fixed price. 100+ products shipped since 2015.

Key takeaways

  • Credit risk scoring models score loan decisions in seconds by training on your historical applicant data and loan outcomes
  • Real-time fraud detection flags suspicious transactions before settlement using velocity signals, device fingerprint, and behavioral history
  • AI document extraction reads income statements, bank statements, and ID documents without manual re-keying
  • AML anomaly detection surfaces unusual transaction patterns using ML models that learn each customer's normal behavior
  • A single-purpose fraud detection or document extraction pipeline typically reaches production in 8 to 12 weeks
  • Cost for a single-purpose system: typically $40,000 to $120,000 depending on data complexity and integration requirements

Trusted by

Vodafone logo
Aldi logo
Nike logo
Microsoft logo
Heineken logo
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Energia Rewards logo
GE logo
Bank of America logo
T-Mobile logo
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The credit decision that sat in a queue while an analyst worked the file.

An application arrives and joins a queue. An analyst opens it, reads the bank statements, keys the income figures by hand, checks the bureau pull, and reaches a decision days later. Meanwhile the applicant waits, and some of them leave.

The same decision, scored by a model trained on your own approved-and-repaid history, takes seconds and cites the factors behind it. Fraud works the same way: a rule-based system flags the transaction after it settles; a model trained on your labeled history scores it before settlement, while there is still something to stop.

The model is not a dashboard bolted onto your data. It reads the same signals your best analyst reads, applies them consistently at every application, and shows its work. That last part is what makes it usable in a regulated business.

Fintech AI is most valuable when it replaces a decision that was slow, expensive, or inconsistent with one that is fast, documented, and model-driven. Credit scoring, fraud detection, and compliance monitoring are all decisions your data can already support. The gap is between the data and the model.

According to Statista's 2024 AI in Finance research, 75% of US banks now use AI in loan processing, and approval times have fallen by 60% as a result. For lending platforms still running manual credit reviews, that gap between a human analyst and a model decision is where revenue and applicant experience are lost simultaneously.

RaftLabs has shipped 100+ products since 2015 for clients including Vodafone, T-Mobile, Aldi, Nike, Cisco, and Lockheed Martin. The engineers who scope your system against your data and a specific business outcome are the ones who build it and hand it over.

Fintech AI pays off when the decision is repeatable and the data is yours.

Everything on the left should already be true for your platform. Even one thing on the right, and a rules engine or an off-the-shelf tool is the smarter first step.

A fit
01

A high-volume decision your team still makes manually: credit scoring, fraud review, loan document processing, or AML alerts.

02

Historical data a model can learn from: labeled fraud outcomes, approved-and-repaid loan history, or documents you process by hand today.

03

You run a lending platform, digital bank, or payment processor, with budget for a single-purpose system from $40,000.

Not a fit
  • No labeled history or usable data yet, so there is nothing for a model to learn from.
  • A one-off report you could pull by hand, not a decision made hundreds of times.
  • You want a generic rules engine, not a model scored against your own data.

What we build

What we build

  • 01
    Credit risk scoring models
    Classification models trained on your historical applicant data and loan outcomes that score credit decisions in seconds, not days. SHAP values per prediction let adverse action notices cite the specific inputs behind a decline, satisfying ECOA and FCRA. We build these on XGBoost and LightGBM.
  • 02
    Real-time fraud detection
    Transaction-level classification models that score each payment in milliseconds against velocity signals, device fingerprint, merchant category, and behavioral history, flagging or declining above threshold before settlement. Trained on your labeled transaction history and retrained on a schedule as new confirmed fraud accumulates.
  • 03
    Loan origination document extraction
    AI that reads bank statements, pay stubs, tax returns, and ID documents and extracts structured fields automatically, classifying individual transactions to give underwriters income and liability signals beyond headline balances. Low-confidence extractions are flagged for manual review, eliminating manual re-keying.
  • 04
    AI customer support
    Conversational AI for balance queries, transaction disputes, loan status, and account management. A retrieval-augmented generation architecture grounds responses in your documentation and transcripts, while intent classification routes resolvable queries to automation and escalates security and regulatory matters to a human with full context. Integrated with Salesforce, Zendesk, or Freshdesk.
  • 05
    Regulatory reporting automation
    AI that extracts, classifies, and aggregates the transaction and position data required for regulatory reports, from CTRs and SARs to Basel III/IV capital and liquidity reports. Automated reconciliation against the general ledger runs before finalization, so every reported figure traces back to its originating transactions. Orchestrated with Airflow and dbt, with LLM-assisted extraction.
  • 06
    AML anomaly detection
    Unsupervised and supervised models that learn each customer's normal transaction behavior and surface deviations for compliance review, with network analysis mapping fund flow between accounts to detect layering and structuring. Produces a prioritized alert queue ranked by severity, reducing false positives versus rule-only monitoring while maintaining detection coverage.
  • 07
    Voice AI for banking and financial services
    Voice agents that authenticate callers by spoken PIN or voice biometric, pull live account data via API, and resolve balance inquiries, loan pre-qualification, and fraud verification callbacks in under 500ms. Regulatory disclosures are delivered verbatim with captured verbal acknowledgment for an auditable record. Banks deploying voice AI for routine servicing typically see inbound call volume to human agents drop 40 to 60 percent within the first quarter. Built on Deepgram and GPT-4o.

Algorithmic trading signal generation

We build AI systems that generate trading signals from market data, news sentiment, alternative data feeds, and technical indicators. These are signal generation systems, the output is a ranked set of trade candidates with associated confidence levels, not execution logic. The trading decision and execution remain with your portfolio management team. We assess your data sources, target instruments, and signal horizon in discovery before scoping the model architecture.

Which fintech decision are you still making manually?

Credit approvals, fraud calls, or compliance alerts: tell us the specific decision and we'll assess which AI system reduces the manual load and what your data supports.

How it works

From scope to shipped

Every project follows the same four phases. Scope is locked and price is fixed before development starts.

  1. Week 1
    01

    Discovery and scope

    We map the problem, the data you have, and the decision being replaced. You leave week 1 with a written scope document and a fixed-price quote. No development starts without your sign-off.

  2. Weeks 2-3
    02

    Design and architecture

    Model architecture, data pipeline design, and integration points are decided before any code ships. Design decisions made here cost ten times less than the same decisions made in week 8.

  3. Weeks 4-12
    03

    Build, integrate, and QA

    Working model at a staging environment by the end of sprint one. Bi-weekly demos. QA runs in parallel with every sprint, not as a phase at the end. Compliance requirements (GDPR, FCRA, ECOA) are built in, not retrofitted.

  4. Weeks 12+
    04

    Deploy and post-launch support

    Production deployment with monitoring activated on launch day. 8 weeks of post-launch support included. Model drift monitoring and retraining schedules configured before handover.

What clients say

What our clients say

Three-year average engagement. Founders and operators describing the work in their own words. No marketing varnish.

Charles E.
Charles E.
USA flagUSA
Entrepreneur at Aggie Technologies

All of the sprints were completed on schedule and on budget. We highly recommend RaftLabs!

01 / 02

What AI for fintech costs

We scope the work in discovery, calculate the cost, and lock the price before development starts. No work begins without your sign-off. Where you land depends on scope, not negotiation:

Single-purpose system, $40,000-$120,000
A credit scoring model, fraud detection pipeline, or document extraction pipeline, scoped and deployed, in 8 to 12 weeks.
Multi-model system, scoped higher
Credit scoring, document extraction, and AML across one platform, typically 16 to 24 weeks depending on integration depth.

Data complexity, integration requirements, and the number of score thresholds and product types drive where a single-purpose system lands. A multi-model system covering credit scoring, document extraction, and AML costs more.

What it costs

Scoped in discovery, starting at $40,000.

A single-purpose credit, fraud, or document system, or a multi-model platform covering credit scoring, document extraction, and AML.

Starts at $40,000

A single-purpose system, credit, fraud, or document, ships in 8 to 12 weeks. Most lenders start there and add the next model once the first is live.

We scope one system first and price it. The results make the case for whether the next model is worth building.

No hourly billing

We scope the work in discovery, calculate the cost, and lock the price in writing before development starts. No hourly billing. A scope change is a priced change request, agreed before work begins, never a surprise on the final invoice.

Compliance built in

GDPR, ECOA, FCRA, and SOC 2-consistent controls are scoped in week 1, not retrofitted before launch. We sign NDAs before any data access and handle financial data under encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access, and audit logging.

Stay on topic

More on fintech

Frequently asked questions

A credit risk scoring model takes structured inputs about a loan applicant and outputs a probability of default. The inputs can include traditional bureau data, credit score, payment history, utilization, derogatory marks, combined with alternative data you have access to: bank transaction history, income verification documents, employment records, and behavioral signals from your application flow. The model is trained on your historical loan data: applications that were approved, repaid, and defaulted. It learns which combinations of applicant features correlate with repayment behavior in your specific lending segment and product. Output is a numeric score and the contributing factors, so your underwriting team can understand why a score is high or low. For markets where bureau data is thin, we build models that weight alternative data signals more heavily. We assess what data you have in discovery and tell you what accuracy improvement is realistic before we start building.

Real-time fraud detection for payment processing is a classification model that evaluates each transaction against a set of features and outputs a fraud probability score in milliseconds. Features include transaction amount, merchant category, location, device fingerprint, time of day, velocity signals (how many transactions in the last 10 minutes), and behavioral patterns derived from the cardholder's historical activity. The model scores each transaction as it arrives. Transactions above a threshold trigger a hold or decline. Transactions in a middle band may trigger a step-up authentication request. The model is trained on your historical transaction data labeled with fraud outcomes. It learns the specific fraud patterns on your platform rather than applying generic rules. Because fraud patterns evolve, the model is retrained on a schedule as new labeled fraud data accumulates.

Loan origination document extraction takes unstructured documents, bank statements, pay stubs, tax returns, ID documents, and utility bills, and extracts structured data fields from them automatically. The AI reads the document, identifies the relevant fields (account holder name, monthly income, account balance, employer name, employment dates), and outputs structured data into your loan origination system. For bank statements, the model also classifies individual transactions by category, salary credits, rent payments, loan repayments, gambling transactions, which gives underwriters additional signal beyond the headline numbers. The model handles a range of document formats and layouts, including scanned paper documents and photos taken on a mobile phone. It flags documents where confidence is low for manual review rather than silently producing incorrect extractions.

Standard AML transaction monitoring uses rules: alert when a cash deposit exceeds a threshold, alert when transactions occur in high-risk jurisdictions, alert when structuring patterns appear. Rules catch known patterns but generate large volumes of false positives because they cannot account for customer context. AML anomaly detection uses unsupervised and supervised ML models that learn each customer's normal transaction behavior and flag deviations from that baseline. A transaction that is unusual for this specific customer surfaces, even if it does not trigger a rule. Combined with network analysis that maps transaction flows between accounts, the model can surface layering and structuring patterns that are invisible to rule-based systems. Output is a prioritized alert queue with the contributing signals.

The cost depends on what is being built. A single-purpose credit scoring model or fraud detection pipeline typically runs between $40,000 and $120,000 depending on data complexity, integration requirements, and the number of score thresholds and product types we need to support. A multi-model system covering credit scoring, document extraction, and AML costs more. We scope the work in discovery, calculate the cost, and lock the price before development starts. No work begins without your sign-off on the scope and cost.

A single-purpose system, such as a fraud detection model or document extraction pipeline, typically reaches production in 8 to 12 weeks. Multi-model systems covering credit scoring, AML, and customer support may take 16 to 24 weeks depending on integration depth. The timeline starts after discovery. We scope the project in week 1, design and architect in weeks 2 to 3, build and QA from weeks 4 to 12, and deploy to production with 8 weeks of post-launch support included.

Yes. A banking voice AI agent authenticates the caller with a spoken PIN or voice biometric, then handles the interaction end to end: confirming a flagged transaction on a fraud callback, walking through loan pre-qualification questions, or reading a required disclosure and capturing verbal acknowledgment with a timestamped audit record. Compliance requirements, MiFID II, Dodd-Frank, PCI DSS disclosure language, are configured into the dialogue layer before deployment, not left to the agent's discretion.

Yes. We sign NDAs before any data access. Financial data handled during development is treated under the same controls as production data: encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access controls, and audit logging. We have experience building GDPR-compliant systems for European clients and data handling standards consistent with SOC 2 controls. Compliance requirements are scoped in week 1, not retrofitted before launch.

Work with us

Tell us what you need. We'll tell you what it would take.

We scope AI for Fintech and Banking in 30 minutes. You walk away with a clear cost, timeline, and approach. No commitment required.

  • Scope and cost agreed before work starts. No surprises. No obligation.
  • Working prototype within 3 weeks of kickoff.
  • Pay by milestone. You see progress before each invoice.
  • 60-day post-launch warranty. Bug fixes, UI tweaks, and deployment support. No retainer.
  • All conversations are NDA-protected.