Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Hypepotamus. It is published on Global Atlanta as part of our content partnership with the Southeast’s top source for innovation news. Sign up for Hypepotamus newsletters here. 

Fraud is getting worse in the Age of AI, says fintech entrepreneur Schalk Nolte.

Sophisticated attacks that once required technical expertise and mass resources are now more accessible, as AI tools can help scammers bypass voice and biometric authentication. AI-generated deepfakes can defeat liveness detection. Even safeguards like two-factor authentication, which relies on one-time passwords, can be compromised and leave customers vulnerable.

For banks, it’s an escalating crisis, and the traditional defenses are crumbling, says Mr. Nolte, CEO of Entersekt, a fraud prevention company now protecting over 250 million cardholders across nearly 900 banks worldwide.

And it is a problem that Entersekt has been working to solve over the last decade and a half.

With patents dating back to 2008 and a formal launch in February 2012, Entersekt first got off the ground outside of Cape Town, South Africa. But as fintech has scaled, the company has found opportunities inside Atlanta.

Nolte, Chief Strategy Officer Dewald Nolte, and several other executives have relocated to Metro Atlanta over the last several years, drawn to the city’s status as “Transaction Alley,” as well as its “strong talent, cost of living, direct flights into most parts of the planet.”

“From starting and running an international business perspective, Atlanta is phenomenal. The ecosystem is here,” Mr. Nolte told Hypepotamus.

The Atlanta connection runs deeper than geography. Entersekt’s main investor, Accel-KKR, a Silicon Valley-based private equity firm, also maintains an office in Atlanta.

Fighting AI With AI

Entersekt’s response to the AI-driven fraud explosion has been to fight fire with fire. The company has embedded AI evaluation into Entersekt’s products and its workflows.

That starts with team Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs, Nolte said. “We ask, ‘Can you do it with AI? And if so, why aren’t you doing it with AI?” he told Hypepotamus. “That’s the question that I ask in every single executive session.”

Late last year, Entersekt launched Orkestrate, a plug-and-play platform update that reduces bank integration time by 85%. This allows financial institutions to deploy fraud protection through a single API rather than multiple complex integrations. The company reports 98% frictionless logins, 90% reduction in P2P payment fraud, and 95% self-serve password resets. It recently won the Datos Insights Award for Authentication Innovation, according to the company’s press release.

Banks using Entersekt include Columbia Bank (formerly Umpqua), Merrick Bank, First Financial Bank Texas and Nuvision Federal Credit Union. They also have a strategic partnership with Mastercard. 

For Mr. Nolte, the mission of the company and its new product is straightforward: Help banking customers “transact without fear.” In an era where AI has made sophisticated attacks accessible to anyone, that goal is both harder and more critical than ever.

“It’s a year of expansion and consolidation inside this market,” Mr. Nolte added, when asked about what the company is focused on in 2026. And as fraud evolves at AI speed, Entersekt is betting Atlanta is the right place to build the defenses banks desperately need.

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