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Tazapay implements advanced transaction monitoring in just two months

Transaction Monitoring Payments Customer Stories

Tazapay is a cross-border payments specialist, facilitating seamless and secure international transactions for a wide range of global merchants. 

Based in Singapore, Tazapay accepts payments from 173 countries across a diverse array of payment rails and channels. These span local payment networks such as PayNow, FedWire, and SEPA Instant Credit Transfers, as well as international channels like Visa, Mastercard, and Swift. Additionally, the company supports on- and off-ramp cryptocurrency transactions, allowing customers to exchange fiat currency for stablecoins or vice versa. 

With its extensive range of payment options, global customer base, and cross-border payment capabilities, Tazapay faces inherent risks associated with money laundering, terrorist financing, and sanctions violations. In light of these risks and the inefficiencies of its previous solution, Tazapay sought a more advanced transaction monitoring system that could streamline compliance, reduce its reliance on manual processes, and improve visibility into customer risk.

Manual solutions hold back compliance

As a rapidly growing innovator in cross-border payments, Tazapay operates in a complex regulatory environment where expectations vary significantly across jurisdictions. Streamlining compliance across diverging anti-money laundering (AML) regimes, therefore, is a front-and-center concern for Tazapay, as well as finding cost-effective solutions to help it meet its obligations effectively.

Initially, Tazapay relied on a blend of manual processes and limited in-house automation for transaction monitoring. While this approach allowed for basic compliance coverage, it became increasingly unsustainable as transaction volumes grew. 

The limitations of this manual-first approach became evident as Tazapay expanded into new markets and supported a broader range of payment channels. Key challenges facing the company included: 

  • Analyzing alerts: The distribution of data across multiple locations hindered compliance analysts’ ability to evaluate alerts and customer risk profiles. 
  • Alert overload: Identifying false positives relies on high-quality data – up-to-date, accurate, complete, and not duplicated. An overreliance on manual systems that could not automatically refresh data or tailor searches meant the company saw a spike in its false positive rate and a limited ability to address true positives.  
  • Delayed alert escalation: Alert prioritization proved difficult with manual systems, reducing the speed of alert triage and escalation.  
  • Limited customization: Tazapay could not automatically apply rules as part of its transaction monitoring, which meant compliance procedures were not tailored to its risks and suspicious transactions could be missed. 

The cumulative effect of these issues was a compliance process that could not scale alongside Tazapay’s growing business.

ComplyAdvantage meets evolving needs 

Recognizing the need for a more advanced transaction monitoring solution, Tazapay based its search on a defined list of criteria: 

  • Advanced automation capabilities to reduce the risk of human error. 
  • Improved efficiency via a holistic view of all customer risks on a single platform. 
  • Minimize risk exposure by screening counterparties in real-time and against the most recent data. 

The company’s search for a more advanced solution led it to ComplyAdvantage’s Transaction Monitoring software, which delivers on all of these counts. Tazapay can now access ComplyAdvantage’s proprietary data, which is updated in real-time by automated systems to ensure red flags can be detected. To improve efficiency, integrated datasets allow Tazapay to view complete customer profiles on a single screen, removing the need to switch between different systems and datasets to understand customer risks in depth. 

Whereas a manual approach led to inefficient workflows, ComplyAdvantage has helped Tazapay adopt a precise, risk-based approach to compliance. Automated alert prioritization allows the company to tackle higher-risk cases first, and ComplyAdvantage’s comprehensive rules library – complemented by its self-serve rules builder – has enabled Tazapay to reduce false positives through customized transaction monitoring. 

Other decisive factors for Tazapay stakeholders were a pricing structure that delivered a strong return on investment, ComplyAdvantage’s strong reputation with regulators across different global markets, and a straightforward integration process.

The power of effective integration

With ComplyAdvantage, Tazapay now monitors transactions between its global merchants and the merchants’ customers, vendors, and suppliers. The company’s need to continue serving an international client base and growing its business made a streamlined onboarding process essential. ComplyAdvantage’s flexible, API-first integration with modular architecture allowed Tazapay to connect its new monitoring software to its existing tech stack and workflows. 

Setup took around two months from start to finish – faster than Tazapay anticipated – thanks to effective collaboration between ComplyAdvantage and Tazapay’s engineering team, with comprehensive API documentation ensuring business continuity. Since then, ComplyAdvantage’s combination of high-quality proprietary data and in-depth support with implementation has been key in upgrading Tazapay’s transaction monitoring. 

“The ComplyAdvantage team has been exceptionally responsive and proactive in addressing our questions and requests for assistance. Their willingness to go the extra mile made the entire process much smoother and I was consistently impressed by their depth of knowledge and expertise. Their insights and knowledge were invaluable and truly stood out.” 

Toh Hwee Min, MLRO, Tazapay 

Streamlined compliance and enhanced insights 

Since partnering with ComplyAdvantage, Tazapay has benefitted from real-time updates to sanctions lists and politically exposed person (PEP) data. Rather than manually double-checking the accuracy of the data themselves, Tazapay’s compliance staff receive periodic notifications from ComplyAdvantage alerting them to the latest updates. 

The new system provides enhanced visibility into transactional patterns, enabling Tazapay to track trends at both the individual customer level and across its entire customer base. This insight helps the company take proactive steps to manage risk, ensuring better case escalation and faster compliance decision-making.

For Tazapay’s compliance team, success is defined by a period-on-period improvement in the quality of their work, leading to a simplified customer onboarding experience, accurate risk identification and scoring, and effective implementation of measures to mitigate those risks. 

ComplyAdvantage’s platform flexibility has also empowered Tazapay to create customized rules that address the specific risks it faces, enabling the detection of suspicious activity with greater accuracy. Key stakeholders also appreciated the ability to easily integrate monitoring with payment screening, allowing Tazapay to immediately deal with its exposure to customer risks, particularly around sanctions, without having to move across siloed datasets and systems. 

“ComplyAdvantage’s transaction monitoring solution is exactly what we were looking for. The results have been accurate monitoring and the ability to stop specific transactions in real time. We are now confident that all transactions are screened and monitored, and we are aware of many more transactions that require further investigation.”  

Toh Hwee Min, MLRO, Tazapay 

The expanding reach and complexity of the payments industry, bolstered by new and innovative payment rails, continues to offer both challenges and opportunities to Tazapay – making smart transaction monitoring crucial in unlocking revenue opportunities while achieving regulatory compliance. 

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Originally published 05 February 2025, updated 05 February 2025

Disclaimer: This is for general information only. The information presented does not constitute legal advice. ComplyAdvantage accepts no responsibility for any information contained herein and disclaims and excludes any liability in respect of the contents or for action taken based on this information.

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