SwiftPay brings real-time fraud decisioning to Philippine financial institutions with SwiftGuard

New regulatory framework puts real-time fraud prevention at the center of financial security 

Against this backdrop, the Philippines introduced a more rigorous anti-fraud framework to protect financial accounts and digital transactions. With the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA) and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Circular No. 1213 now in force, fraud prevention is no longer a periodic control exercise – it’s a continuous, real-time, and examinable responsibility shared across the financial ecosystem.

BSP Circular No. 1213, in particular, requires covered banks and BSP-supervised financial institutions (BSFIs) to deploy robust Fraud Management Systems (FMS) capable of rapidly detecting and blocking suspicious or fraudulent transactions in real time. 

These systems must be able to evaluate transactions across five parameters, namely: (1) transaction velocity, (2) changes in mobile device and account information, (3) geolocation, (4) blacklist screening, and (5) behavioral anomalies. To adapt to evolving fraud tactics, these systems must also undergo constant calibration through continuous analysis, adaptive rule adjustments, stress testing, independent review, and proactive monitoring.

Built for the Philippines, not adapted to it

With AFASA and BSP Circular No. 1213 reshaping how fraud risk is managed across the financial system, SwiftPay is stepping forward at a pivotal moment for the Philippine market. The company is working with banks and BSFIs to strengthen real-time fraud protection while allowing them to build on the core systems they already operate.

“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,” says Paweł Jędruch, Head of Technology at SwiftPay. “At SwiftPay, our role is to help institutions build that capability without forcing them to replace the core systems they already rely on.”

At the center of SwiftPay’s capabilities is SwiftGuard, its real-time fraud-detection and decisioning layer. SwiftGuard evaluates transactions across all five FMS parameters identified in BSP Circular No. 1213 and returns a decision: allow, hold, block, or step up for additional verification. However, the financial institution’s own core system retains control and executes the action.

Financial scams are still a persistent threat in the Philippines. More than 60% of Filipino adults are targeted by financial scams each year. E-wallets are the leading channel through which fraudsters receive their illicit proceeds, accounting for 74% of cases, followed by wire or bank transfers at 14%. Fraud has shifted from an occasional consumer risk to a systemic challenge for the country’s rapidly expanding digital finance ecosystem.

New regulatory framework puts real-time fraud prevention at the center of financial security 

Against this backdrop, the Philippines introduced a more rigorous anti-fraud framework to protect financial accounts and digital transactions. With the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA) and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Circular No. 1213 now in force, fraud prevention is no longer a periodic control exercise – it’s a continuous, real-time, and examinable responsibility shared across the financial ecosystem.

BSP Circular No. 1213, in particular, requires covered banks and BSP-supervised financial institutions (BSFIs) to deploy robust Fraud Management Systems (FMS) capable of rapidly detecting and blocking suspicious or fraudulent transactions in real time. 

These systems must be able to evaluate transactions across five parameters, namely: (1) transaction velocity, (2) changes in mobile device and account information, (3) geolocation, (4) blacklist screening, and (5) behavioral anomalies. To adapt to evolving fraud tactics, these systems must also undergo constant calibration through continuous analysis, adaptive rule adjustments, stress testing, independent review, and proactive monitoring.

Built for the Philippines, not adapted to it

With AFASA and BSP Circular No. 1213 reshaping how fraud risk is managed across the financial system, SwiftPay is stepping forward at a pivotal moment for the Philippine market. The company is working with banks and BSFIs to strengthen real-time fraud protection while allowing them to build on the core systems they already operate.

“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,” says Paweł Jędruch, Head of Technology at SwiftPay. “At SwiftPay, our role is to help institutions build that capability without forcing them to replace the core systems they already rely on.”

At the center of SwiftPay’s capabilities is SwiftGuard, its real-time fraud-detection and decisioning layer. SwiftGuard evaluates transactions across all five FMS parameters identified in BSP Circular No. 1213 and returns a decision: allow, hold, block, or step up for additional verification. However, the financial institution’s own core system retains control and executes the action.

SwiftGuard combines more than 40 tunable rules across six categories, with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) integration, tamper-evident audit trails, multi-year log retention, and case-export capabilities designed to support examination and investigation. The platform is delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS) through standard REST/JSON APIs secured with OAuth 2.0. There is no proprietary protocol or SDK lock-in, so it sits above a financial institution’s existing core rather than requiring a full rebuild.

This layered approach is especially relevant as AFASA introduces stronger accountability for financial institutions. The law requires adequate risk management systems and controls and provides for restitution of funds when institutions fail to employ them or exercise the required diligence. BSP Circular No. 1213 further extends responsibility to relevant third-party service providers and clearing-switch operators, reinforcing that resilience depends on every participant in the payments chain.

“The next phase of digital finance growth will be determined by trust,” says Damian Gil, Chief Revenue Officer at SwiftPay. “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.”

SwiftGuard is already live in production at financial institutions including VBank, Netbank, and AgriBank. It is also natively integrated with two systems in the Nextbank infrastructure, the Core Banking System (CBS) and Mobile Banking, allowing institutions running either system to adopt SwiftGuard on a plug-and-play basis. With this, SwiftPay is helping Philippine financial institutions move beyond deadline compliance and towards sustained, adaptive protection.