enza and Fraudio Launch enzaGuard to Bolster AI Fraud Protection Across Africa

The integration of Fraudio’s machine-learning capabilities into the enza platform marks a significant shift for African financial institutions seeking to scale digital payments safely. By embedding real-time fraud detection directly into the transaction layer, enza is removing the traditional friction of third-party security integrations for banks and fintechs across the continent.

What was announced

enza has fully integrated intelligence and machine-learning capabilities into its platform through a new solution called enzaGuard. This tool is designed for enza’s customers—primarily financial institutions and fintechs—to provide industry-leading fraud protection as they develop and launch new payment products. The solution is powered by Fraudio’s fraud intelligence and machine-learning technology and functions as a cloud-native, real-time fraud detection layer.

enzaGuard is capable of ingesting signals across a wide variety of payment activities, including issuing, acquiring, transfers, digital wallets, and ATM transactions. By analyzing transaction patterns, enriched attributes, peer-group behavior, and transaction sequences, the system generates risk scores in milliseconds. These scores are designed to be integrated directly into existing authorization workflows, 3DS protocols, and review processes.

The primary goal of the pre-integration is to allow enza customers to access sophisticated protection without the operational complexity of sourcing and managing a separate fraud solution. The technology specifically targets emerging threats such as account takeover, bot attacks, mule networks, and authorized push payment (APP) scams. Additionally, the system supports the detection of merchant-initiated fraud and the suspicious movement of funds, helping organizations strengthen their broader financial-crime controls through a single, unified AI layer. This protection is built into the proposition from the outset, ensuring that as customers roll out new services for payment acceptance or consumer payments, the security layer is already active.

"Fraud is evolving rapidly as digital payments scale across Africa. By integrating Fraudio’s AI capabilities directly into enzaGuard, we can give our customers sophisticated protection as part of the enza platform — quickly, easily and without compromising the payment experience. It is another way we help our customers create richer, more compelling payment propositions backed by the capabilities they need to grow with confidence."

Hany Fekry, Group Chief Executive Officer of enza.

The companies involved

enza is a financial technology company that provides a specialized platform for the African payments market. The company focuses on enabling banks, fintechs, and merchants to launch and manage digital payment services, positioning itself as a critical infrastructure provider in a region undergoing rapid digital transformation. Under the leadership of Group CEO Hany Fekry, enza emphasizes the creation of resilient and innovation-ready payment propositions that allow businesses to accept payments and consumers to make them with higher levels of trust.

Fraudio is a fintech specializing in AI-powered fraud and financial crime detection. The company’s core offering is a centralized machine-learning "brain" that analyzes transaction data to identify and prevent fraudulent activity in real-time. Led by Chief Executive Officer João Moura, Fraudio has sought to disrupt the traditional fraud detection industry by "decomplexifying" the technology, making it easier for payment service providers and financial institutions to embed high-level security into their existing stacks. The company provides cloud-native solutions that scale alongside the digital payment ecosystems they protect, focusing on reducing false positives while maintaining a seamless user experience.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has followed Fraudio’s growth and its analysis of the global threat landscape closely. The company recently highlighted the scale of the challenge facing the industry, as Fraudio Exposes 25% Surge in Payment Fraud Driven by Coordinated Network Attacks. To support its technological development and market expansion, the firm successfully secured capital, as seen when Fraudio Raises New Funding Led by Alea Capital Partners to Scale AI Fraud Detection.

The company has also strengthened its leadership and international reach through governance milestones, such as when Fraudio Appoints Payments Pioneer Robert Kraal to Board of Directors. Furthermore, Fraudio has been active in other emerging markets, recently demonstrated when Akurateco Strengthens LATAM Offering With PIX Antifraud Protection Powered by Fraudio.

What this means

The African digital payment landscape is currently defined by a high-velocity transition from cash to digital, which has naturally attracted sophisticated criminal networks. This partnership highlights a growing industry trend: the "commoditization" of high-end security. When fraud protection is pre-integrated into the core payment platform, it shifts the burden of security from the individual bank or merchant to the infrastructure provider. This puts significant pressure on legacy payment processors who still require customers to source and integrate third-party security tools. The move suggests that in emerging markets, security is no longer a standalone product but a fundamental feature of the payment rail itself.