Lloyds tests quantum computing to crack money mule networks

At the centre of the project is Lloyds’ growing internal quantum capabilities, including a new working group of Quantum Ambassadors drawn from across the business, with qualifications in physics, maths and computer science.

Over the nine-month project, this team worked alongside Lloyds’ economic crime prevention experts and IBM’s specialists to explore how quantum computing could one day help uncover complex fraud patterns that can be challenging for traditional computers to detect.

The experiment tested multiple quantum algorithms to see whether patterns of known money mule behaviour could be identified within a larger transactional graph. The team used anonymised data on one of IBM’s 156-qubit quantum computers.

The solution successfully identified a real money mule that had been deliberately embedded in the data to validate the approach, demonstrating how real-world financial crime challenges could be tackled in the future using algorithms running on quantum computers.

Ron van Kemenade, chief operating officer at Lloyds Banking Group, comments: “Financial crime is becoming more complex and more network‑driven, which means we need to keep pushing the boundaries of technology to protect customers. While quantum computing is still emerging, this experiment has allowed us to translate research into practical insights, while building a strong internal community of quantum experts that will continue to explore future use cases and applications as the technology evolves.”