Top-ranked vendor for AI functionality and best-in-class scores across configurability, workflow, modeling, and case management
Unit21, the leading AI Risk Infrastructure platform for fraud prevention and AML monitoring, announced it has been named a Category Leader in Chartis 2026 RiskTech Quadrants® for Enterprise Fraud Solutions and Payment Fraud Solutions. Across the evaluation, Unit21 received the highest score across all vendors evaluated for AI functionality—formal validation of the company’s strategic emphasis on agentic AI as the underlying infrastructure of fraud and AML operations, not as an experimental add-on.
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“Unit21 sits at the front of a market shift Chartis is seeing, where AI is not simply a feature but a structural market driver,” said Philip Mackenzie, Senior Research Principal at Chartis Research.
Chartis evaluates vendors on a 1–5 scale, where scores between 4.1 and 5.0 represent best-in-class capabilities and scores between 3.1 and 4.0 represent advanced capabilities. Unit21 earned best-in-class scores in five categories, including a 4.4 in Configurability and a 4.3 in AI functionality, placing the company at the front of a market that Chartis describes as undergoing a fundamental shift toward unified, AI-first fraud prevention platforms.
“Unit21 sits at the front of a market shift Chartis is seeing, where AI is not simply a feature but a structural market driver,” said Philip Mackenzie, Senior Research Principal at Chartis Research. “The combination of best-in-class AI capabilities, configurability, and workflow orchestration alongside its consortium and graph analytics places Unit21 as a Category Leader and among the vendors best positioned to define the next generation of enterprise fraud prevention.”
Best-in-class scores across the capabilities that matter most
Chartis awarded Unit21 best-in-class scores in five evaluation categories spanning the three quadrants making up the 2026 RiskTech Quadrants® for Enterprise and Payment Fraud Solutions:
- Configurability: 4.4 — recognizing self-service rule building, customizable workflows, and customers deploying new detection rules in minutes rather than weeks.
- AI and GenAI functionality: 4.3 — the highest score across all vendors evaluated, recognizing the array of detection and investigation agents that operate inside the case management environment with full audit trails.
- Workflow and analytics: 4.2 — reflecting platform-centric architecture and Agentic AI as the operational core, not an add-on.
- Workflow and case management: 4.2 — acknowledging the ability to create and test custom AI Agents alongside complex multi-step automations.
- Modeling and testing: 4.1 — recognizing backtesting and shadow-mode rule simulation that validates model performance against live data before deployment.
Unit21 was also recognized for advanced capability scores across behavioral monitoring (3.9), mule detection (3.8), ACH fraud (3.8), fraud and analytical models (4.0), and integrations (4.0), reinforcing the breadth of the platform across fraud typologies and payment rails.
“Chartis’ recognition validates what our customers have been telling us: fraud is now an enterprise problem, and the teams winning are the ones who replaced rigid, single-purpose tools with a unified, AI infrastructure,” said Tyler Allen, Chief Executive Officer at Unit21. “Category Leader placement across both Enterprise and Payment Fraud quadrants is a strong external signal for institutions evaluating their next move, especially those AML customers we’re partnering with to consolidate fraud and compliance onto a single platform.”
Validation of an agentic AI strategy
Chartis’ 2026 update calls out AI as a structural market driver, not a feature. Vendors are being evaluated on how effectively they operationalize, govern, and adapt AI, not simply whether they offer it. Unit21’s top score reflects the company’s strategic conviction that AI Agents must execute the work, prove every decision, and stay defensible to regulators.
“We built AI that does the job, not AI that talks about doing the job,” said Kunal Datta, Chief Product Officer at Unit21. “Our AI Agents handle alert triage autonomously at production scale, but they also recommend detection rules, surface control gaps, and help teams rethink their strategy. And the whole thing is configurable: customers build their own agents within Unit21, with full testing, auditability, and data lineage baked in. That’s the difference between an AI feature and an AI platform. Chartis’ ranking reflects that bet. The future of financial crime prevention isn’t a black box you hope works, or a constant back and forth with engineering teams. It’s an agentic platform where the practitioners stay in control of every decision.”
Today, Unit21’s AI Agents process more than 200,000 alerts per month across customers, including Green Dot, Circle, and Crypto.com. The AI Risk Infrastructure unifies fraud and AML so teams can scale safely without expanding headcount. Unit21 also operates one of the largest cross-institution, cross-rail, cross-typology fraud consortiums in the market, with more than 100 participating financial institutions and coverage of over 100 million U.S. adults providing network-level mule and money laundering signals that strengthen detection for every customer.
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