Sept 3 (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.