Nigerian compliance and cybersecurity startup Smartcomply has expanded into the United Kingdom, bringing its AI-powered anti-money laundering, Know Your Customer, and fraud detection platform, Adhere, to one of the world's most closely regulated financial markets. The expansion targets Electronic Money Institutions, remittance firms, neobanks, and cross-border payment fintechs operating across African payment corridors including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and Rwanda.

What Adhere Does

Launched in 2024, Adhere integrates directly into financial institutions through APIs and combines real-time transaction monitoring, behavioural analysis, machine learning, and automated compliance reporting. The platform verifies customers using local identity systems including Nigeria's Bank Verification Number and National Identification Number databases, while also drawing on regional identity datasets across East and Francophone Africa. Smartcomply says Adhere currently serves more than 100 businesses and monitors over $1 billion in monthly transaction volume across African markets.

The platform was specifically designed to reduce false-positive fraud alerts, a persistent and costly problem for financial institutions operating across African payment corridors, where transaction patterns often differ significantly from the North American and European behaviours that most legacy compliance systems were originally trained on.

Why the UK Market

The UK is home to a large and growing concentration of fintechs, neobanks, and remittance companies with direct exposure to African markets. Many of these institutions face a compliance challenge that Smartcomply CEO Gbemisola Osunrinde has described as a structural perception problem: African payment corridors are frequently treated as high-risk by default, not because of evidence, but because existing compliance infrastructure was not built to accurately assess them. Osunrinde said the company's aim is to transform those corridors from perceived compliance risks into growth opportunities for global financial institutions.

The expansion also comes as Nigerian and African regulators tighten financial crime monitoring frameworks. The Central Bank of Nigeria recently introduced standards that formally recognise artificial intelligence and machine learning for AML compliance, a regulatory development that strengthens the market case for what Smartcomply has built.



The Competitive Landscape

In the UK market, Smartcomply will compete against established compliance providers including ComplyAdvantage, Sumsub, and Smile Identity. The startup's differentiation argument is origin: while competitors built systems for Western markets and adapted them for Africa, Adhere was built from firsthand experience with African financial infrastructure including mobile money ecosystems, local identity verification challenges, and regional fraud patterns. Chief Technology Officer Anita Ajalla said that difference in starting point produces meaningfully different results in accuracy and false-positive rates for African transaction monitoring.

What Is Next

Founded in 2021 as a governance, risk, and compliance company, Smartcomply plans to deepen its presence in East and Francophone Africa in 2026, with a particular focus on Rwanda and Cote d'Ivoire. The UK expansion is the company's first move into a major Western financial market and represents a significant step in its ambition to position African-built compliance infrastructure as a credible option for global financial institutions.