The client

Adyen, a global payment service provider, simplifies payments for businesses across online, mobile, and in-store platforms. Operating in over 30 countries, Adyen processes billions in payment volume annually, serving enterprises like Spotify, Uber, and eBay with a focus on seamless transactions and risk management.

The challenge

Adyen, managing a rapidly growing portfolio of merchants, faced the challenge of ensuring effective risk monitoring while scaling operations. 

With merchants ranging from small businesses to global enterprises, identifying financial risks, compliance issues, and early warning signs required manual processes that were time-consuming and inefficient. 

The increasing complexity and scale of monitoring merchants globally created a pressing need for a solution that could provide real-time insights and streamline risk assessments without compromising on accuracy.

To address this challenge, Adyen integrated Owlin’s AI-driven monitoring platform into their risk management processes. Owlin delivers continuous, real-time monitoring of merchants by analyzing vast amounts of global news and data sources. This integration enables Adyen’s Merchant Potential Liability Team to receive early warnings of adverse events, such as a merchant entering administration or restructuring. The proactive alerts allow Adyen to swiftly assess and mitigate risks, ensuring the company’s liability is minimized and operational integrity is maintained.

To explore the impact of Owlin’s monitoring solutions, we interviewed Jesse Koreman,Senior Financial Risk Analyst at Adyen. In this discussion, he shares how Owlin helped Adyen streamline merchant risk monitoring, address challenges, and ensure compliance through real-time insights.

For this case study, we interviewed Jesse Koreman, Senior Financial Risk Analyst at Adyen, about harnessing the power of Owlin to monitor merchants continuously. 

How long have you been working with the Owlin Platform?

“For four years, my full tenure at Adyen.”

How do you (and your team) use Owlin daily?

“Owlin helps us manage our whole portfolio. When I started at Adyen, it was already not feasible to manually keep track of all the news articles. At the time, we had 300 to 400 hundred entities to keep track of, and today, it’s expanded to a thousand.

Our Merchant Potential Liability Team sees the value of Owlin when merchants are flagged for misconduct or financial stress in a particular client. That helps because it’s something that we can’t manually track, so it gives us an early signal.”

Why is this so useful for Adyen?

“We have regular check-ins, but the continuous monitoring helps us with our ability to move quickly if needed.”

Can you give an example of this?

“Yes, recently, we had a retailer which had raised some questions. At some point, Owlin picked up articles showing that the retailer in question was going into administration or restructuring. This is often a bad sign for us because Adyen could become liable for the risk when an administrator takes over, or there is new ownership.

Flagging this early, which Owlin is well equipped for, helps us mitigate the risk as much as possible. It would have been difficult to catch this with manual monitoring alone. ”

What kind of checks does your team use Owlin for?

“In the last couple of years, we shifted our team structure to designated industry experts for our pillarized offering. This means every expert gets alerted daily on their portfolio via Owlin. Then, some people could be working on a specific client and want to do a live check or look into some historical news data. Lastly, we have people who manage a sensitive portfolio and, therefore, also do live checks via Owlin.”

How does Owlin fit within your overall risk management strategy?

“There are two ways for us to split up the work. The first one is when we have to do an initial review of a client. We check their financial business model and get acquainted with what kind of risk we face. Where Owlin complements this process is with continuous monitoring. Thus, when we say we are happy with the risk we see now. But of course, today’s world can change in days and even hours. With Owlin, that’s something we can manage on the scale we are currently at.”

How do you envision the future of the partnership between Adyen and Owlin?

“In the last few years, we have focused on scalability within Adyen. Owlin has really helped with that and continues to help.”

Thanks, Jesse!