This September 2022, the fintech inspired Payments Association of Zambia (PayZ) in collaboration with ICT Association of Zambia (ICTAZ) will host its inaugural festival that seeks to bring together like minded stakeholders of an industry that has found itself on the right side of the future of finance.
Leading the association in his freshman year is the tech visionary and Chief Executive of Zambia’s largest fintech by corporate client base Roy Muyelu. The Probase Limited founder was a natural choice to lead the payment association in their maiden year as his company has been in the forefront of innovation that until now has remained largely invisible to the discerning customers who “use” the ubiquitous backend solutions in their day -to-day financial transaction.
With great power comes great responsibility as it was aptly coined in the Marvel Universe Spiderman franchise. Hence why the “super heroes” of fintech are taking the lead in bringing together key stakeholders to discuss pertinent issues that affect the e-commerce society.
Speaking at a closed session at the recently ended Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-money laundering Group (ESAAMLG) Conference in Livingstone, Zambia, the fintech head discussed a new growing vulnerability around virtual assets that have become prone to the vice of money laundering globally.
A virtual asset is like any other kind of assets that can be used as a store of value. It is unique in that representation of value that can be digitally traded, transferred or used for payment. However, there is a marked distinction of virtual assets as they do not include the digital representation of fiat currencies.
The rise of virtual assets such as bitcoin and all the other flavors of digital coins that currently becoming infamous for facilitating payments of proceeds of sophisticated digital crime has been a resounding call to tech influencers like Roy for fintech to step up its game in providing solutions.
Due to the infancy of the sector, Virtual Asset Service Provision is currently faced with money laundering and terrorist financing risks. Since the advent of COVID and time in memorial, many institutions across the world have gotten a feel of the latter malaise as they have experienced ransomware whose only inoculation from compete data loss required payments to the dark web using “untraceable” bitcoin currency. Clearly, a regional concerted and collaborative approached that has regulators and government one side, and innovators and fintech on the other is required to fight this evolving battle.
According to some of the statistics shared during the closed-door presentation, “the total serviceable market for this region (sub-Saharan) currently stands at 200 million people”. With that, “only 5% of these individuals currently have public records including a birth certificate”.
Roy believes this is a challenge for the region as lack of an integrated know-your-customer (KYC) has become a key enabler to the fast spread of digital crime. “Crime has spread throughout the region as crime syndicates work closely together to ensure stolen goods and monies are not easily traceable”.
The tech leader believes that a regional approach that will see the fintech space embrace the more rigorous KYC strategies will need to be adopted for the sector to have a fighting chance to win the war against digital crime. “Implementing the same preventive measures as financial institutions, include customer due diligence, record keeping and reporting of suspicious transactions” are among the measures proposed.