Sumsub is partnering with MarCoPay, a Philippines-based electronic payments platform for seafarers and their families, to strengthen fraud prevention and compliance as deepfake-driven fraud rises sharply in the country and a new anti-scam law raises the bar for financial institutions.
Key Takeaways
- Deepfake attacks in the Philippines rose 61% year-on-year in 2025, among the highest rates in Asia-Pacific, according to Sumsub.
- MarCoPay will use Sumsub’s identity verification, liveness detection and AML screening to support onboarding and compliance for seafarers and their families.
- The partnership responds to the Philippines’ Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA), whose enhanced fraud-management requirements took effect in June 2026.
A mobile workforce, a rising fraud risk
The Philippines remains the world’s leading supplier of seafarers, a globally mobile workforce that Sumsub said faces growing exposure to AI-enabled fraud. According to its Identity Fraud Report 2025-26, deepfake attacks in the country increased 61 per cent year-on-year in 2025, one of the highest rates in the region, while sophisticated multi-step coordinated fraud rose 180 per cent year-on-year globally.
What the partnership covers
MarCoPay enables seafarers to manage, access and transfer funds through a digital ecosystem designed for speed and reliability. Under the partnership, it will use Sumsub’s document verification, which covers more than 14,000 document types from over 220 countries and territories, alongside Liveness Detection, which creates a 3D FaceMap to confirm a user’s presence and re-checks it for future logins and transactions.
MarCoPay will also run sanctions, politically exposed person, watchlist and adverse media checks through Sumsub’s AML Screening, which draws on more than 50,000 data sources, alongside Sumsub’s AFASA Fraud Management Bundle for rule-based fraud detection, dynamic risk scoring and fund-recovery support.
“This partnership strengthens our ability to deliver safe and secure services. With enhanced security, we aim to better serve Filipino seafarers and our business partners,” said Mr Hayato Kiyohara, Chief Executive Officer of MarCoPay.
Meeting a new regulatory bar
AFASA’s enhanced fraud-management requirements, which took effect in June 2026, raised expectations for real-time monitoring and fund-recovery controls across Philippine financial institutions.
“AFASA is reshaping how financial institutions in the Philippines approach fraud prevention, placing greater focus on connected controls across the customer lifecycle. Our partnership with MarCoPay reflects Sumsub’s commitment to supporting Philippine businesses as the compliance landscape evolves,” said Ms Penny Chai, Vice President, APAC at Sumsub.
