Equals Money partners Okta to secure AI-driven payments

By Vriti Gothi

Equals Money | Railsr has partnered with identity and access management provider Okta as it seeks to reinforce security and governance across its increasingly AI-enabled payments infrastructure.

The FinTech processes approximately $50 billion in annual payment volumes, much of it through API-led and embedded finance services used by B2B2X customers. As AI adoption accelerates across payments and cross-border workflows, the company said identity and access management has become a critical control layer for monitoring both human and machine activity. Equals has been using Okta and its Auth0 platform for the past 16 months to support this shift.

The move reflects a broader challenge facing FinTechs as AI becomes embedded in core operations. While AI agents are being deployed to automate functions such as onboarding, booking, and payments, they also introduce new risk vectors. At the same time, account takeover attacks are increasing as AI tools lower the barrier for cybercriminals, while the ungoverned use of AI by employees has created emerging “shadow AI” risks similar to those seen during the rise of shadow IT.

Equals uses Auth0 to manage customer identity and the Okta platform for workforce identity, access control, and AI governance. This approach enables the company to monitor behavioural patterns, enforce role-based access, and identify unauthorised AI usage across internal and customer-facing systems. Security measures include behavioural anomaly detection, support for passkeys and multi-factor authentication, and controls designed to maintain usability for 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 and behavioural oversight across its payments stack, Equals’ partnership with Okta underscores a growing focus across the FinTech sector on balancing AI-driven innovation with tighter security, visibility, and risk controls as automation becomes more autonomous.