Philippine digital payments provider MarCoPay has partnered with identity and compliance technology company Sumsub to expand fraud-prevention and customer-verification controls for its seafarer-focused platform, the companies announced on October 28. The arrangement covers checks at onboarding and monitoring of activity as customers continue using the service.
MarCoPay serves Filipino seafarers and their families, including users who need to access or move money while working across borders. Sumsub said the engagement is intended to support MarCoPay’s response to requirements associated with the Philippines’ Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA), but the announcement did not disclose contract value, customer volumes or independent compliance-assessment results.
Identity verification and ongoing screening
According to the joint announcement published by Sumsub, MarCoPay is using document-based identity verification, facial liveness checks and anti-money laundering screening. The tools are intended to check identities during sign-up and help identify attempts to use manipulated documents or impersonate legitimate account holders.
MarCoPay also uses screening against sanctions, politically exposed-person and adverse-media data. Sumsub said its system supports more than 14,000 document types from over 220 countries and territories, figures that describe the vendor’s platform capabilities rather than the number of people or documents checked by MarCoPay.
The companies said additional transaction-monitoring capabilities include rule-based fraud detection and dynamic risk scoring. Such controls can flag unusual activity for review, but a technology provider’s product features do not establish whether a specific attempted fraud has been prevented or whether an account meets every applicable legal obligation.
The partnership combines checks that have sometimes been handled in separate stages of a financial-services workflow. An initial document check can help establish identity, while monitoring after onboarding is intended to identify activity that may not have been apparent when the account was created.
Philippine anti-scam rules and a mobile workforce
AFASA places greater attention on financial-account fraud and institutional responsibilities in handling scams. Sumsub framed its partnership with MarCoPay around the growing need to connect identity verification with transaction monitoring and processes for responding to suspicious activity. The companies did not publish a detailed audit of MarCoPay’s existing controls or explain exactly how the implementation changes every compliance procedure.
In its own Identity Fraud Report 2025–26, Sumsub estimated that deepfake attacks in the Philippines increased 61 percent year on year in 2025. That figure is based on the company’s research and should not be read as an official national crime statistic. Sumsub also cited an increase in complex coordinated fraud globally, underscoring the importance of evaluating both identity and behavioral signals.
Context.ph reported the partnership on October 28, highlighting MarCoPay’s use of liveness detection, sanctions checks and monitoring for suspected fraud. No independent figures on customer adoption, transaction volumes or fraud losses were supplied.
Another regional partnership for Sumsub
The deal adds to Sumsub’s work with payments providers in Asia. TNGlobal reported earlier this month that Singapore-based FOMO Pay was integrating verification, transaction monitoring and related compliance functions from the company. The new MarCoPay engagement differs in its focus on services for Filipino seafarers and the Philippine regulatory environment.
For MarCoPay, the operational test will be whether more connected checks can reduce friction for legitimate customers while giving compliance teams timely information about suspicious activity. Neither company disclosed implementation milestones or quantified performance improvements in the announcement.