Philippines-based MarCoPay has partnered with Sumsub to support fraud prevention and AFASA compliance for its seafarer payments platform.
Under the agreement, MarCoPay is deploying Sumsub’s tools across customer onboarding, ongoing compliance checks, and transaction monitoring, in line with the Philippines’ Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA). The setup brings real-time fraud signals from across the customer journey into a single view, which MarCoPay intends to use for continuous fraud prevention and risk management.
MarCoPay was incorporated in 2019 and is licensed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas as an Electronic Money Issuer. It operates an e-wallet designed primarily for seafarers, their families, and friends, allowing users to store, access, and transfer funds.
Regulatory and fraud backdrop
The partnership follows the introduction of AFASA’s fraud management requirements, which took effect in June 2026 and raised expectations for real-time monitoring and fund-recovery controls across Philippine financial institutions. The country’s role as a primary global source of seafarers adds a cross-border dimension to these obligations, as providers serving the sector must protect a workforce that frequently operates outside the country, as well as dependants at home.
Sumsub’s Identity Fraud Report 2025-26 points to rising pressure on this front. Deepfake attacks in the Philippines increased by 61% year-on-year in 2025, among the highest rates recorded in Asia Pacific, while multi-step coordinated fraud grew by 180% year-on-year globally. Both figures reflect the growing challenge posed by AI-enabled fraud.
Onboarding and screening capabilities
At onboarding, MarCoPay is using Sumsub’s document-based identity verification, Liveness Detection, and AML Screening. The verification component covers over 14,000 identity document types from more than 220 countries and territories, a scope relevant to customers whose work regularly takes them across borders.
Liveness Detection generates a 3D FaceMap to confirm that a user is physically present during verification. The FaceMap is then referenced to authorise subsequent actions, including logins and transactions, with the aim of detecting spoofing attempts, deepfakes, and other forms of AI-enabled impersonation.
AML Screening runs sanctions, politically exposed person (PEP), watchlist, and adverse media checks within one workflow, drawing on more than 50,000 data sources across over 240 countries and territories.
Transaction monitoring under AFASA
Alongside these onboarding controls, MarCoPay is adopting Sumsub’s AFASA Fraud Management Bundle, which provides transaction monitoring through rule-based fraud detection and dynamic risk scoring. The bundle is intended to help MarCoPay identify suspicious transactions and respond promptly, including through fund-recovery processes.
Penny Chai, Vice President, APAC at Sumsub, noted that AFASA is reshaping fraud prevention in the Philippines by placing greater emphasis on connected controls across the customer lifecycle. In this context, a single operational layer that unifies verification, fraud prevention, transaction monitoring, and risk workflows is becoming increasingly important, according to Chai.
