Equals Money | Railsr partners with Okta to secure AI-driven payments

Source: Speed Communications

As AI becomes central to fintech operations and payments workflows, Equals Money | Railsr has partnered with Okta, the San-Francisco based identity and access management company, to enhance security, visibility, and governance.

Equals Money processes around $50 billion annually, with the majority of that volume flowing through its API-driven, embedded finance capabilities. Through its combined infrastructure and APIs, the fintech enables B2B2X customers to leverage the value offered by AI adoption, including the deployment of agents, while ensuring that cross-border transfers are protected from the increasing threats of AI-enabled malicious actors. For the last 16 months, this innovation has been underpinned by Okta and the Auth0 security platforms.

Balancing innovation and security

In financial services, identity and access management (IAM) has become the primary control plane for monitoring both human and AI behaviour.

Account takeover continues to be a major threat. Humans remain the weakest link, and AI has lowered the barrier for attackers. Fake login pages can now be cloned in minutes, and sophisticated attacks that once required specialist expertise are now widely accessible. In many organisations, employees are experimenting with new AI tools, yet this sometimes takes place without oversight, creating “shadow AI” risks similar to shadow IT.

At the same time, AI agents are increasingly being used to streamline processes such as booking, payments, and onboarding. Unlike traditional automation, these agents can adapt and make decisions, which requires strict governance.

By leveraging Okta, Equals can distinguish between normal activity and unusual patterns, providing visibility and guardrails without slowing innovation.

How Equals Money | Railsr uses Okta

Equals uses Auth0 for customer identity and the Okta platform for workforce identity, access, and AI governance, enabling security controls across both customer-facing and internal systems. Key capabilities include:

• Behavioural monitoring: Detects unusual login patterns, such as multiple services accessed simultaneously.
• Role-based access control: Ensures employees operate only within their authorised permissions.
• Shadow AI oversight: Identifies unapproved AI tools or unauthorised activity.
• Secure authentication: Supports passkeys, multi-factor authentication, and frictionless login for both sophisticated and less technical users.

James Simcox, chief operations and product officer at Equals Money | Railsr, said: “At Equals we want to focus on building and innovating faster, more seamless financial products, while keeping our customers’ accounts safe. To do this, we need to defend against AI-powered threat actors while still helping someone’s grandmother log in.

“Agents will soon be taking part in the payment journey. You’ll book a holiday by asking an agent to find flights and hotels and pay automatically. But this opportunity comes with new risks. We have to be ready.”

“Okta gives us the guardrails to achieve all of this. We’ve also rolled out Okta to our staff. Having both products integrated helps us manage interactions across the whole ecosystem.”

By embedding identity management, behavioural reporting, and role-based access controls across operations, Equal’s partnership with Okta demonstrates how fintech companies can scale AI-driven innovation safely. It highlights the importance of visibility, governance, and proactive risk management: lessons that resonate across the wider payments and fintech ecosystem.