The move comes as the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA) and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Circular No. 1213 place stronger accountability on banks, e-wallet operators, and other BSP-supervised financial institutions (BSFIs) to deploy fraud management systems capable of detecting and responding to suspicious transactions in real time.
The regulatory shift follows growing concerns over online financial fraud in the Philippines, where more than 60 percent of Filipino adults are targeted by financial scams each year. E-wallets account for 74 percent of cases in which fraudsters receive illicit proceeds, followed by bank or wire transfers at 14 percent.
Real-time defense
Under BSP Circular No. 1213, covered institutions are required to deploy Fraud Management Systems (FMS) that continuously evaluate transactions across five key parameters: transaction velocity, changes in mobile device and account information, geolocation, blacklist screening, and behavioral anomalies.
The systems must also undergo regular calibration through continuous monitoring, adaptive rule updates, stress testing, independent reviews, and ongoing analysis to keep pace with evolving fraud techniques.
SwiftPay said its platform, SwiftGuard, was designed to address these requirements while allowing financial institutions to retain their existing core banking infrastructure.
"This regulatory shift makes clear that compliance cannot be treated as a one-time technology project. Financial institutions need controls that keep learning, adapting, and producing evidence as fraud tactics evolve," said SwiftPay head of technology Paweł Jędruch.
"At SwiftPay, our role is to help institutions build that capability without forcing them to replace the core systems they already rely on," he added.
Layered approach
SwiftGuard functions as a real-time fraud detection and decisioning layer that assesses transactions based on the BSP's prescribed fraud indicators before recommending whether a transaction should be allowed, held, blocked, or subjected to additional verification. The financial institution's core system retains authority to execute the final action.
According to the company, the platform incorporates more than 40 configurable fraud rules across six categories, along with Anti-Money Laundering integration, tamper-evident audit trails, multi-year log retention, and case export capabilities to support regulatory examinations and investigations.
Delivered as software-as-a-service through standard REST/JSON application programming interfaces secured by OAuth 2.0, the platform integrates with existing banking systems without requiring institutions to rebuild their technology infrastructure.
Building trust
SwiftPay said the layered architecture becomes increasingly relevant as AFASA raises the accountability of financial institutions for maintaining adequate fraud risk management controls.
The law provides for restitution of funds when institutions fail to implement appropriate safeguards or exercise the required level of diligence. BSP Circular No. 1213 also extends fraud management responsibilities to relevant third-party service providers and clearing-switch operators, emphasizing a coordinated approach across the payments ecosystem.
"The next phase of digital finance growth will be determined by trust," said SwiftPay chief revenue officer Damian Gil.
"Financial institutions that can make sound decisions as money moves, and then document those decisions to continuously improve their controls, will be better positioned to protect customers and scale digital services responsibly."
SwiftPay said SwiftGuard is already deployed at VBank, Netbank, and AgriBank. The platform is also natively integrated with the Nextbank Core Banking System and Mobile Banking platform, enabling participating financial institutions to adopt the fraud management solution on a plug-and-play basis as they strengthen compliance with the country's evolving anti-fraud framework. —Ed: Corrie S. Narisma
