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As instant payments, AI-driven fraud, and digital finance scale across Africa, institutions can no longer rely on fragmented legacy systems to build trust, security, and financial inclusion.By Richy Emah, Regional Director for North/West Africa at Sumsub
Africa’s digital finance ecosystem is scaling rapidly, but so are the risks emerging alongside it. Across Nigeria and other rapidly digitising markets on the continent, instant payments, mobile-first banking, fintech innovation, and cross-border digital transactions are transforming how millions of people access financial services.
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At the same time, fraud is becoming faster, more sophisticated, and increasingly powered by artificial intelligence.
Financial systems built for much slower era of finance
During discussions at the RegTech Africa Conference in Abuja, one message came through consistently from regulators, banks and fintech leaders: many financial systems were built for a much slower era of finance.
As financial ecosystems become more connected and transactions move in real time, the pressure on compliance and fraud prevention systems is growing significantly.
This shift already plays out in real time. Fraud is no longer isolated or opportunistic. Criminal networks are increasingly using synthetic identities, deepfakes, social engineering, automated scams, and account takeover techniques to exploit weaknesses across
Multi-step fraud attacks grew by 180% globally
What makes this even more concerning is the speed at which financial crime is evolving. According to findings from the Sumsub Identity Fraud Report 2025–2026, the share of sophisticated multi-step fraud attacks grew by 180% globally year-on-year, reaching 28% of all detected fraud.
Nigeria also recorded the world’s highest share of synthetic document fraud in 2025, 8%. These trends show how quickly AI-powered financial crime is reshaping digital ecosystems.
At the same time, many institutions still rely on siloed onboarding systems, fragmented AML tools, delayed reviews, and manual compliance processes. As fraud increasingly operates at machine speed, many compliance systems are still operating at human speed.
Security gap becoming dangerous in real-time payment environments
That gap becomes particularly dangerous in real-time payment environments. Instant payment systems dramatically reduce the time available for manual reviews or delayed intervention.
Yet many organisations still treat onboarding, fraud prevention, transaction monitoring, and identity verification as separate functions instead of part of one connected trust infrastructure.
What became increasingly clear throughout discussions at RegTech Africa was that compliance and fraud prevention can no longer remain reactive or manual at scale. Financial institutions now need systems that can identify risk continuously and respond in real time across the customer journey.
Stronger security should not come at the cost of customer experience
As a result, technologies such as AI-driven monitoring, behavioural analytics, automated identity verification, anomaly detection, and risk-based orchestration are becoming increasingly important. However, stronger security should not come at the cost of customer experience.
Richy Emah
One of the biggest misconceptions around compliance is that stronger controls automatically create friction. In reality, users expect both security and convenience. They want fast onboarding, seamless transactions, and confidence that institutions can protect them from increasingly sophisticated threats.
This is why the future lies in intelligent, risk-based systems that operate largely invisibly for legitimate users while escalating higher-risk behaviour automatically in real time. Low-risk customers should move through digital ecosystems quickly and smoothly, while suspicious activity triggers enhanced monitoring in the background.
Africa’s population still operating within informal economies
This balance between trust, accessibility, and security is especially important in African markets, where financial inclusion remains a major priority. Large portions of the population still operate within informal economies or remain underserved by traditional banking infrastructure.
In markets such as Nigeria, fragmented identity systems and uneven compliance maturity continue to create challenges for both financial access and fraud prevention.
This is also why conversations around ISO 20022, interoperable eKYC systems, and payment modernisation are becoming increasingly important within the African continent.
Modernisation is not only about speed. It is about creating trusted, interoperable systems that improve fraud detection, strengthen AML monitoring, reduce onboarding friction, and support safer financial inclusion at scale.
Cross-border frauds rising as African markets become connected
As African markets become increasingly connected through regional trade and digital payment expansion, cross-border fraud risks are also becoming more sophisticated.
Cross-border integration under frameworks such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will make trusted interoperability even more important in the years ahead.
Without stronger coordination between regulators, banks, fintechs, telecom providers, and technology partners, fragmented systems may simply create new vulnerabilities for criminals to exploit.
At the heart of the issue is the fact that no institution can tackle modern financial crime alone. Fraud prevention increasingly depends on trusted collaboration across institutions and jurisdictions, balanced with privacy protections, regulatory alignment, and interoperable compliance standards.
Ultimately, the institutions that will define the next phase of Africa’s digital finance growth will not necessarily be the fastest or the largest. They will be the ones capable of building trusted ecosystems that combine innovation, interoperability, real-time intelligence, seamless compliance, and resilient digital identity infrastructure.
Africa has an opportunity to build trust into the foundations of its next-generation financial infrastructure. The question is whether institutions move quickly enough to keep pace with the risks evolving around them.
In today’s digital economy, trust is no longer simply a support function in finance. It has become integrated into the infrastructure itself.
