MarCoPay, an e-money platform for Filipino seafarers, has partnered with compliance firm Sumsub to strengthen fraud prevention and support its compliance with the Philippines’ Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA), Sumsub announced.

MarCoPay lets seafarers and their families receive salaries and manage and transfer funds through its app.

A joint venture between Japanese shipping company NYK Line and Philippine conglomerate Transnational Diversified Group, it has operated as a BSP-registered e-money issuer since 2019, BusinessWorld reported.

Checks From Sign-up to Every Transaction

MarCoPay will use Sumsub’s document-based identity verification, liveness detection and anti-money laundering (AML) screening to onboard customers.

Sumsub says it can verify more than 14,000 types of identity documents from over 220 countries and territories, which suits seafarers who regularly work across borders.

Its liveness detection creates a 3D face map to confirm that a user is physically present during verification.

The system then checks against it to authorise later actions, such as logins and transactions, helping to detect spoofing and deepfakes.

MarCoPay will also use Sumsub’s AFASA Fraud Management Bundle, which monitors transactions through rule-based fraud detection and risk scoring.

It is designed to flag suspicious transactions quickly and support fund recovery.

“This partnership strengthens our ability to deliver safe and secure services,” said Hayato Kiyohara, CEO of MarCoPay.

Rising Pressure Under AFASA

AFASA’s enhanced fraud management requirements took effect in June 2026, raising the bar for real-time monitoring and fund recovery across financial institutions.

The same month, the BSP’s deadline for banks and e-wallets to replace SMS one-time passwords with stronger authentication also kicked in.

Penny Chai, Vice President for APAC at Sumsub, said AFASA is pushing financial institutions to connect their fraud controls across the entire customer lifecycle.

Deepfake attacks in the Philippines rose 61% year on year in 2025, among the highest rates in Asia-Pacific, according to Sumsub’s own Identity Fraud Report 2025-26.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Philippines based on an image by muhammad-abdullah via Magnific and MarCoPay via its website.