Nivelo
Nivelo Technical Briefing
Published October 14, 2020
Supported by Finix , Routable and The Kauffman Foundation
Overview
Nivelo presents real-time ACH risk detection for payroll processors, ACH originators, and third-party senders. Instead of waiting the usual four-to-five-day ACH settlement window to find out a payment has failed, Nivelo's single API scores each debit and credit at the moment of origination — sub-second — combining identity, account, device, and behavioral signals into a machine-learned expected-loss score. The demo walks through a payroll processor flow (think ADP or Gusto) catching impersonation fraud at origination, triggering a real-time phone verification with the employee, and then exposing full score explainability in Nivelo's developer dashboard so ops teams can tune against false positives without a black-box model. Because Nivelo plugs in before the ACH batch file is built, it can act on richer payload data — payer/payee relationship, portal behavior, last account change — that the ACH network itself never sees.
0:00 Introduction to Nivelo — real-time ACH risk
Nivelo is an API company focused on real-time ACH risk detection, partnering with ACH processors, large originators, and third-party senders. The aim: bypass the 4-5 day ACH settlement wait by scoring each payment at origination.
1:00 Embedded in the payment flow, business-first
Why Nivelo built API-first — so partners embed risk scoring into their existing origination flow — and why the first use cases target business payments rather than consumer.
1:30 Payroll as the first use case
Payroll processors like ADP and Gusto manage both a debit side (funding from the employer) and a credit side (payout to employees) — Nivelo scores both in a single per-transaction call rather than a batch.
2:30 Origination-side payee registry and behavioral data
At origination the payroll processor already has live employee data — names, account/routing numbers, contract type, and self-service portal behavior. Nivelo taps into all of it the moment a payment is initiated.
4:30 Sub-second ML scoring at origination
Instead of micro-deposits or account-aggregator onboarding checks, Nivelo's API returns a sub-second expected-loss score per transaction — account validity, identity, fraud flow (synthetic identity, account takeover, business email compromise).
6:00 Real-time phone verification workflow
Live demo of Nivelo flagging likely impersonation fraud on a payroll payment and prompting the originator to run phone verification with the employee before releasing funds — rather than hearing about the failure days later via an ACH return code.
8:00 Developer dashboard with score explainability
The developer dashboard lets support staff drill into any flagged transaction, compare its score against others, and see exactly which signals drove the return — no black-box model.
9:30 Richer-than-ACH payload at origination
Because Nivelo taps in before the ACH batch file is built, it can send extra data the ACH network never sees — payer/payee relationship, portal interaction history, last account change — and get an immediate risk ping back.
Presented by Eli Polanco — Nivelo · LinkedIn
Topics: Payments, Compliance & Regulation
