Last Friday, Ant International and Citi announced that they are testing a new tool called the Falcon Time-Series Transformer (TST) Model developed by Ant International. This tool aims to improve how they help customers manage foreign exchange (FX) risks.
Ant International said in a statement that, developed with aviation clients as an initial use case, the solution aims to offer greater payment solutions for the airline industry, which processes billions of payment transactions annually.
As airline travel continues to grow, Ant International and Citi have joined forces to create a new solution. This combines Ant International’s experience with airline payments and Citi’s strong foreign exchange (FX) services to help the bank’s customers manage their FX costs better.
Ant International’s Falcon TST Model is a powerful AI tool that uses advanced technology to analyze huge amounts of past data (almost 2 billion data points). It learns patterns over time to predict future numbers, helping businesses plan their cash flow and FX needs more accurately. This means they can save money by reducing their spending on currency hedging and FX fees.
By using the Falcon TST Model together with Citi’s Fixed FX Rates solution—which makes it easier for businesses selling online in different currencies to manage FX risks—the new combined service helps companies to protect themselves from changes in currency rates by locking in FX prices for a set time. This reduces the risk of losing money due to currency fluctuations.
With FX rates locked in and agreed upon, businesses can better predict their budgets, prices, and profits.
Citi’s Fixed FX Rates solution supports over 70 currencies and is widely used by clients across various sectors, including airline, travel, and e-commerce.
Using Ant International’s AI-powered forecasting, businesses can improve how accurately they predict sales and FX risks.
Ant International’s model has already achieved over 90% accuracy in its tests and is expected to help airlines lower their FX hedging costs as the forecasts continue to improve.
By combining Ant International’s Falcon TST model with Citi’s Fixed FX Rates solution, Citi has helped a top Asian airline complete FX transactions that lowered the airline’s FX hedging costs in its first real deals.
“We are constantly evolving our products and solutions to support new use cases built on our clients’ priorities,
“Citi’s Fixed FX Rates solution supports some of the world’s largest e-Commerce and Travel names, and this innovative solution sees us leveraging best-in-class technology capabilities in the broader ecosystem to accelerate go-to-market use cases,” said Sam Hewson, Global Head of FX Sales at Citi.
Kelvin Li, General Manager of Platform Tech at Ant International, stated that this is the first industry-tailored solution developed from our Falcon TST Model in collaboration with a bank partner to serve their customers.
“It’s an important milestone in our journey to leverage AI for FX management for our businesses, partners, and also merchants,
“The 30 percent hedging cost savings Ant International has achieved for the pilot airline customer shows the cost efficiency that can be achieved with AI-enabled FX hedging. We are excited to expand the solution with Citi to serve more businesses and industries,” he added.
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