Thailand's financial sector is reaching a turning point as the next phase of financial evolution dubbed "banking 5.0" converges with complex scams, prompting regulators to tighten oversight and pushing banks to strengthen real-time risk management and governance, says SAS Thailand, the local unit of a global data and artificial intelligence (AI) software company.
Banking 5.0 is characterised by hyper-personalised, AI-driven and human-centric services that prioritise sustainability and financial health.
Nutapone Apiluktoyanunt, managing director of SAS Thailand, said the country's financial sector is entering a new phase as generative AI is shifting from an experimental stage to become core infrastructure.
The shift accelerates automation, strengthens fraud detection and credit decisions, and enables end-to-end personalisation.
Meanwhile, financial fraud is escalating, driven by organised, high-volume scam networks.
An estimated 73% of Thais face scam risks, while 47% have already experienced fraud, making it a widespread part of everyday financial activity.
Mr Nutapone said regulators are stepping up AI adoption, with the Bank of Thailand deploying AI-based supervision to enhance anti-scam measures, consumer protection and market surveillance.
"This represents a shift from retrospective reporting to real-time, data-driven oversight that enables earlier intervention before losses occur," he said.
However, pressure is intensifying from high-velocity payment rails and stablecoins, which are creating detection blind spots, alongside a surge in AI-driven authorised push payment scams and tighter regulatory expectations, noted Mr Nutapone.
Velocity payment rail systems offer high-speed, low-cost and secure cross-border money movement by leveraging stablecoins and modern fintech infrastructure.
Digital asset activity is also drawing greater scrutiny, with stablecoin trading reaching roughly 2.8 billion baht a day.
Mr Nutapone said authorities are tightening oversight and coordinating crackdowns on illicit flows to safeguard financial stability.
SAS is positioning AI at the core of financial services, strengthening fraud detection and financial crime prevention while enabling more proactive risk management in an increasingly volatile economic environment.
At the enterprise level, he said SAS is helping financial institutions deploy and manage AI across operations with greater efficiency and control.
Inflection point
Shaw Pin Kuck, head of customer advisory for Asean at SAS, said Thailand is at an inflection point where AI is rapidly transforming banking and fintech, though risk is rising.
"The key challenge is no longer adoption, but whether institutions can deploy AI safely, transparently, and in line with regulatory scrutiny," he said.
In Thailand, regulatory momentum is building with the central bank issuing its "Guiding Principles for AI Risk Management", setting risk-based expectations across governance, data, models, cybersecurity, vendor management and consumer protection.
Execution is essential as financial institutions must translate these policies into day-to-day operational controls, said Mr Kuck.
Ian Holmes, global director for fraud and compliance risk at SAS, said fraud is becoming industrialised in Thailand and worldwide as AI enables highly scalable, personalised scams that are harder to detect.
He said synthetic identity fraud is emerging as a major threat, with criminals assembling "Frankenstein" identities from a mix of real and fabricated data.
Mr Holmes said Thailand is strengthening digital identity systems, integrating biometrics and real-time verification to reduce fraud risks.
The biggest constraint remains data sharing, he noted.
"While personal data must stay protected, sharing transaction-level data across payment networks is essential to detect suspicious patterns. Without moving from siloed systems to system-wide visibility, fraud prevention will remain fragmented," said Mr Holmes.
AI is also reshaping core banking. Automated lending now handles low- to mid-risk cases, while high-risk approvals remain supervised by humans. He said virtual banks are agile but data-poor; incumbents are data-rich but constrained by legacy systems.
In Thailand, strong local banks are gaining ground in AI-driven risk management, noted Mr Holmes.
The next frontier is behavioural biometrics and bot detection. Banks are using signals like typing rhythm and device handling to separate humans from bots.
As fraud scales with AI, human imperfection is becoming the clearest signal of authenticity, he said.
The future of fraud prevention will depend on how effectively banks combine AI innovation, regulatory alignment and cross-industry collaboration -- turning data into their strongest line of defence, said Mr Holmes.
