Smartcomply, a Nigerian compliance and cybersecurity startup, is expanding into the United Kingdom as it looks to serve Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs), remittance companies, neobanks, and cross-border payment fintechs.
The company is entering the UK market with Adhere, its AI-powered anti-money laundering (AML), Know Your Customer (KYC), and fraud detection platform. Smartcomply says the product was built specifically for African financial systems and data environments, with a focus on high-growth payment corridors including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and Rwanda.
The expansion comes amid a broader regulatory shift across Africa, where regulators are tightening AML compliance and transaction monitoring standards. In March, the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced baseline requirements for automated AML systems, formally recognising artificial intelligence and machine learning as part of financial crime monitoring frameworks.
“African payment corridors should be a growth opportunity for the global financial system, not a liability,” said Gbemisola Osunrinde, Chief Executive Officer of Smartcomply. “Smartcomply’s UK presence means that, for the first time, UK fintechs and banks have direct access to an AML platform that understands African data the way it should be understood: from the inside out.”
Founded in 2021, Smartcomply initially operated as a governance, risk, and compliance provider for African businesses before expanding into financial crime monitoring in 2024 with the launch of Adhere. The shift followed what the company described as a gap in how African financial transactions are monitored and understood by global compliance systems.
Osunrinde said many foreign transaction monitoring systems struggle to interpret African payment behaviour, often resulting in false fraud alerts and excessive manual reviews. In some cases, she noted, this has contributed to financial institutions de-risking African markets altogether.
Smartcomply says Adhere was built to address these challenges through direct integration with local identity systems, real-time transaction monitoring, behavioural analytics, and automated compliance reporting.
The platform connects to financial institutions through APIs and can verify users using systems such as Nigeria’s Bank Verification Number (BVN) and National Identification Number (NIN) databases. The company also says it works with partners across East and Francophone Africa to access identity data used for customer verification in those regions.
Its machine learning models analyse transaction patterns across mobile money and digital payments to differentiate legitimate high-volume activity from suspicious behaviour. Flagged transactions can be paused and escalated for manual review before processing is completed.
Adhere also generates audit-ready compliance reports aligned with local regulatory requirements, allowing institutions to automate parts of their reporting processes.
Smartcomply says the platform uses a flexible pricing model, allowing customers to choose specific services such as KYC verification, transaction monitoring, or full enterprise access through API-based integrations.
The company currently serves more than 100 businesses across regulated industries and reports that it monitors over $1 billion in monthly transaction volume across African markets.
In the UK, Smartcomply will compete with established compliance and identity verification providers such as ComplyAdvantage, Sumsub, and Smile Identity. However, the company argues that most existing solutions were originally designed for European or North American markets and later adapted for Africa.
“We built Adhere because we lived the problem,” said Anita Ajalla, Chief Technology Officer of Smartcomply. “Compliance technology designed in New York or London cannot read Nigerian Bank Verification Numbers, cannot understand mobile money flows in Kenya, and cannot make sense of West African mule networks. The companies that will participate in African growth are those building infrastructure for African realities. We are bringing that infrastructure to London.”
Smartcomply says it is also expanding its compliance infrastructure across East and Francophone Africa, with plans to deepen its presence in Rwanda and Côte d’Ivoire in 2026.