(Reuters) -Nasdaq Verafin and fraud detection firm BioCatch said on Wednesday they had formed a strategic partnership to combine their technologies to combat rising payments fraud.

Banks and payment firms are facing mounting pressure to protect customers from scams and social engineering schemes that prey on vulnerabilities in faster payment systems and drain accounts in real time.

Under CEO Adena Friedman, Nasdaq has expanded beyond being a stock exchange operator and made acquisitions to build a broader suite of financial technology tools. It had struck a $2.75 billion deal in 2020 to buy anti-financial crime software maker Verafin.

BioCatch's financial crime prevention platform delivers real-time analysis of up to 3,000 unique behavioral and device-related datapoints.

In the first phase of the partnership, BioCatch's alerts and insights will be integrated into the Nasdaq Verafin platform.

The companies said the integration aims to strengthen fraud prevention by combining behavioral and transactional data, allowing financial firms to stop suspicious payments before money leaves a customer's account.

Nasdaq Verafin's financial crime management technology is used by over 2,600 financial institutions, representing over $10 trillion in collective assets.