MarCoPay, a Philippines-based electronic payments platform built for seafarers and their families, has teamed up with identity verification and fraud prevention specialist Sumsub to reinforce its defences as the country’s Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA) tightens compliance expectations.
Under the agreement, Sumsub will underpin MarCoPay’s customer onboarding, ongoing compliance checks and transaction monitoring in line with AFASA. By giving MarCoPay a unified picture of fraud signals as they emerge at every stage of the customer journey, the collaboration is intended to sharpen the platform’s continuous fraud prevention and risk management.
The timing reflects mounting pressure on the sector. The Philippines is still the largest source of seafarers globally, which heightens the importance of secure financial services for a workforce that moves constantly between countries.
Sumsub’s Identity Fraud Report 2025-26 found that deepfake attacks in the Philippines climbed 61% year-on-year in 2025, among the steepest increases across Asia-Pacific.
Globally, sophisticated multi-step coordinated fraud jumped 180% over the same period, underlining the threat posed by AI-driven schemes. AFASA’s stricter fraud-management obligations, in force since June 2026, now demand stronger real-time monitoring and fund-recovery capabilities from financial institutions.
MarCoPay will deploy Sumsub’s document-based identity verification, Liveness Detection and AML Screening to secure the onboarding process. Sumsub can validate more than 14,000 identity document types issued in over 220 countries and territories, offering the international reach required by users whose careers routinely take them overseas.
The Liveness Detection technology allows MarCoPay to confirm genuine customers within seconds while flagging spoofing and deepfake attempts. It generates a 3D FaceMap to establish that a person is physically present during verification, then draws on that map to authorise subsequent activity such as logins and transactions, adding protection against AI-powered impersonation.
Through AML Screening, MarCoPay can run sanctions, politically exposed person (PEP), watchlist and adverse media checks within one workflow. The tool taps more than 50,000 data sources spanning over 240 countries and territories, helping the platform sustain its compliance processes as it grows.
Alongside these measures, Sumsub’s AFASA Fraud Management Bundle adds transaction monitoring powered by rule-based detection and dynamic risk scoring. This enables MarCoPay to spot suspicious activity quickly and act on it, including through fund-recovery procedures.
MarCoPay offers seafarers a digital ecosystem to manage, access and move their money safely, with an emphasis on speed, reliability and convenience. The company pairs accessible payment services with compliance and fraud controls as part of its focus on financial security and consumer protection.
MarCoPay CEO Hayato Kiyohara said, “This partnership strengthens our ability to deliver safe and secure services. With enhanced security, we aim to better serve Filipino seafarers and our business partners.”
Sumsub vice president, APAC Penny Chai said, “AFASA is reshaping how financial institutions in the Philippines approach fraud prevention, placing greater focus on connected controls across the customer lifecycle. This makes an operational layer that unifies verification, fraud prevention, transaction monitoring, and risk workflows increasingly critical.
“Our partnership with MarCoPay reflects Sumsub’s commitment to supporting Philippine businesses as the compliance landscape evolves. By providing that trust infrastructure needed to build multi-layered defences against AI-enabled fraud, we help businesses build a more resilient response to emerging fraud risks.”
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
