Smartcomply is expanding into the UK to sell its Adhere AML, KYC, and fraud tools to EMIs, remittance firms, and cross-border fintechs serving Africa.
Smartcomply is expanding to the UK with Adhere, its AI-powered compliance platform for anti-money laundering, Know Your Customer, and fraud detection. AML means rules and tools that help financial firms spot and stop dirty money. KYC is the identity checks financial firms run before and during a customer relationship.
The company says Adhere was built for African financial systems and datasets. In practice, that means it is trained to recognise patterns common in African payment flows, including messy identity records, informal business activity, and cross-border remittance behaviour.
In the UK, Smartcomply plans to sell to Electronic Money Institutions, remittance firms, neobanks, and cross-border payment fintechs. EMIs are regulated companies that can issue e-money, like a digital wallet balance, without being a full bank.
Smartcomply says its UK expansion will focus on the Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and Rwanda payment corridors. The company’s CEO, Gbemisola Osunrinde, framed the move as giving UK fintechs and banks direct access to an AML platform that “understands African data” from “the inside out.”
Regulators across Africa are tightening rules around AML controls and transaction monitoring, which is the automated review of payments to flag suspicious activity. In March, Nigeria’s central bank introduced baseline standards for automated AML solutions, including formal recognition of AI and machine learning for monitoring financial crime.
For UK-based firms moving money into and out of Africa, compliance is often a cost centre and a growth blocker. If Smartcomply’s African-data approach reduces false alerts, it could make it easier to scale remittance and cross-border payment products while staying within UK and African regulatory expectations.
Primary Source: Techcabal
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