AMLYZE: The $10 Million Bet Against Billion-Dollar AML Giants

AMLYZE, the Lithuanian RegTech has taken aim at the multi-billion dollar anti-money laundering software market, and raised $3.7 million since its 2019 founding to prove that a former regulator’s perspective can disrupt an industry dominated by enterprise giants like FICO, Oracle, and NICE Actimize. The Vilnius-based startup’s pitch is simple: automate what banks spend billions on manually and do it faster, cheaper, and with fewer false alarms.

Co-founders Gabrielius Erikas Bilkstys and Alexandre Pinot built AMLYZE after careers spent supervising financial institutions at the European Central Bank, the Bank of Lithuania, and the Financial Intelligence Unit. That insider knowledge shapes every line of code. Where legacy providers offer one-size-fits-all enterprise systems that take months to implement, AMLYZE built a modular SaaS platform that banks can deploy in weeks and customize without hiring consultants.

The market AMLYZE targets is expanding rapidly. The global AML software sector was valued at $3.1 billion in 2024 and analysts project it will reach $10.2 billion by 2034, growing at an annual rate of 12.7%. Financial crime costs the global economy between €715 billion and €1.87 trillion annually, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and regulators are tightening enforcement. Global AML penalties topped $5.8 billion in recent years, pushing institutions to upgrade systems that many still run on decades-old infrastructure.

AMLYZE’s product addresses the pain points that compliance officers cite most often: too many false positives, too much manual review, and platforms that can’t adapt to evolving threats. The company claims its transaction monitoring system reduces false positives by up to 62% compared to industry averages. That metric matters because banks waste thousands of hours investigating legitimate transactions flagged by overly sensitive algorithms. One client, Advanzia Bank, reported improved efficiency across compliance teams after deploying AMLYZE’s transaction monitoring and customer screening modules. The Luxembourg-based digital bank, which serves 2.8 million credit card customers across six European markets, chose AMLYZE over building an in-house solution, citing the platform’s speed, flexibility, and regulatory expertise.

Vinted Pay, the electronic money institution powering Europe’s largest secondhand fashion marketplace, faced a different challenge. With over 100 million registered users conducting peer-to-peer transactions across 20 markets, the fintech needed real-time monitoring that could scale without drowning compliance teams in alerts. AMLYZE delivered a false-positive rate below 1% for sanctions screening, a figure that Simonas Jonciulis, Vinted Pay’s money laundering reporting officer, called crucial for handling such a large customer base. The platform now monitors millions of transactions daily while automating risk assessments and suspicious activity reporting.

The technology behind these results combines machine learning with a rules engine that compliance teams can configure without writing code. AMLYZE offers more than 200 pre-defined transaction monitoring scenarios and 400 risk-scoring rules that institutions can modify to match their risk appetite. The system handles real-time and retrospective monitoring, customer due diligence, sanctions screening against global watchlists, politically exposed persons databases, and adverse media analysis. All modules feed into a case management system that pre-fills suspicious activity reports, cutting filing time by three hours per report according to company data.

AMLYZE raised €1 million in a 2023 pre-seed round led by Practica Capital and FIRSTPICK. In October 2024, the company closed a €2.35 million seed round that brought total funding to $3.7 million. The seed round was led again by Practica Capital, with participation from FIRSTPICK, Coinvest Capital, angel investors including Gintas Balciunas of Dokobit and Donatas Dailide of DOJUS Group, and institutional investor Advanzia Bank. The bank’s dual role as both client and investor signals confidence in AMLYZE’s ability to serve larger institutions while scaling its technology platform.

The fresh capital is funding development of what AMLYZE calls a cross-border information-sharing platform for anti-financial crime. The system will use artificial intelligence and synthetic data to enable financial institutions to share intelligence about suspicious patterns without violating data privacy regulations. This addresses a long-standing industry problem: banks can’t effectively collaborate on financial crime detection because strict confidentiality rules prevent them from sharing customer information. AMLYZE’s approach uses privacy-enhancing technologies to create synthetic datasets that preserve statistical patterns while removing identifying information, allowing institutions to train machine learning models on a broader pool of data.

The competitive landscape pits AMLYZE against entrenched players with decades of market presence and deep relationships with the world’s largest banks. FICO’s Falcon platform, SAS Institute’s AML solutions, and NICE Actimize’s suite serve the top tier of the market. These vendors command premium prices and offer comprehensive enterprise systems that integrate with core banking platforms, but they also require significant implementation resources and long deployment cycles. Smaller providers like ComplyAdvantage, Alessa, and Verafin target mid-sized institutions with more agile solutions, while established consulting firms like Tata Consultancy Services and Accenture build custom systems for clients willing to invest in bespoke development.

AMLYZE positions itself in the gap between enterprise complexity and basic compliance tools. The company’s founders argue that financial institutions don’t need multimillion-dollar implementations when they can deploy a cloud-based system in eight weeks. The pitch resonates particularly with fintechs, payment processors, and mid-tier banks that need sophisticated monitoring but can’t justify the cost and complexity of legacy systems. Lithuania’s growing fintech ecosystem provided early validation. The company’s first clients were local payment firms and peer-to-peer lenders that needed AML infrastructure to meet regulatory requirements without building teams of developers.

The regulatory environment is shifting in AMLYZE’s favor. Europe’s sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive introduced stricter liability rules and expanded the list of predicate offenses. The Financial Action Task Force continues to pressure countries to strengthen enforcement. The European Union is establishing a new AML authority that will directly supervise high-risk institutions starting in 2027. In the United States, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has pushed for real-time monitoring and information sharing among banks. These trends create demand for systems that can adapt quickly to new rules without requiring expensive upgrades.

Geographic expansion is the near-term focus. AMLYZE has clients across the Baltics and is pushing into Western Europe, with Luxembourg serving as the entry point to the region’s banking hub. The Advanzia Bank partnership opens doors to other Luxembourg-based institutions, while the Vinted Pay relationship demonstrates the platform’s ability to handle high-volume marketplaces. The company is also targeting cryptocurrency firms, which face mounting regulatory pressure to implement AML controls as digital assets move from the fringe to mainstream finance. Virtual asset service providers need systems that can monitor blockchain transactions in real time and screen counterparties against sanctions lists, capabilities AMLYZE has built into its platform.

The startup’s team of 32 employees includes former regulators, AML specialists, and software engineers with banking experience. Key hires came from Danske Bank, the Bank of Lithuania, and fintech companies across Europe. This combination of regulatory insight and technical expertise is central to AMLYZE’s strategy. Where competitors hire compliance consultants to advise product teams, AMLYZE’s founders write the requirements themselves based on years spent examining banks and enforcement actions.

The path forward requires proving that a smaller player can compete on enterprise deals while maintaining the flexibility that attracted early fintech clients. AMLYZE needs to convince chief compliance officers at large institutions that a Lithuanian startup can deliver the reliability, security, and support they expect from vendors. That means building out customer success teams, achieving compliance certifications, and demonstrating that the platform can handle the transaction volumes and data requirements of billion-dollar banks. The company’s recognition as one of the 100 fastest-growing startups in Central and Eastern Europe by Sifted, the Financial Times-backed publication, provides credibility. Selection for the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s Digital Sandbox program offers access to regulators and potential clients in one of Europe’s largest financial markets.

The founders are betting that the AML software market is ripe for disruption because incumbents have grown complacent. Legacy systems are expensive, slow to update, and generate too many false positives. Banks complain about these problems but stick with known vendors because switching costs are high and compliance failures can trigger regulatory penalties. AMLYZE aims to make switching easy enough that cost-conscious institutions will take the risk on a newer platform. The strategy depends on flawless execution, because one client implementation failure or compliance miss could damage the reputation the company is building.

The $3.7 million in funding gives AMLYZE runway to expand sales, add engineering capacity, and develop the information-sharing platform that could differentiate it from competitors. But the company is still small compared to rivals that count funding in the hundreds of millions. Success will depend on whether former regulators can build a business that matches their technical expertise, and whether banks will trust a startup with the compliance systems that keep them out of regulatory trouble. The market is big enough for multiple winners, but AMLYZE needs to move fast before larger competitors wake up to the threat or acquire the capability to match its speed and price.