Zepz Partners with UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) to Pro-actively Develop Financial Risk Indicators of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) for Payments Industry

WHY THIS MATTERS

The announcement on May 19, 2026, that global payments giant Zepz (the parent group behind WorldRemit and Sendwave) has joined a specialized National Economic Crime Centre (NECC) Public Private Partnership Cell marks a crucial milestone in how financial crime compliance targets non-traditional threats. Historically, anti-money laundering (AML) transaction monitoring has focused heavily on terrorist financing, tax evasion, and standard drug trafficking networks. However, cross-border remittance corridors are increasingly being exploited by bad actors facilitating livestreamed child sexual abuse (CSA).

This partnership with the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) directly impacts the technical capabilities of international remittance compliance. By analyzing 12 months of live transaction data, Zepz has helped establish and validate advanced risk indicators that can spot the highly distinct, often micro-transactional financial footprints associated with international CSA syndicates. For the broader fintech sector, this collaborative data modeling has resulted in an official NECC threat alert, giving global financial institutions the exact blueprints needed to upgrade their transaction monitoring algorithms from passive compliance checks to proactive, investigative safeguards.

Zepz, the global payments group behind WorldRemit and Sendwave, today announced their participation in a National Economic Crime Centre (NECC) Public Private Partnership (PPP) Cell focused on combatting child sexual abuse (CSA).

Co-chaired by the NCA, the Cell’s aim, through collaboration with partners from the regulated financial sector and law enforcement, is to increase the collective

awareness of the financial footprint of CSA to identify, disrupt, reduce, and deter UK and international consumers and facilitators of livestreamed CSA, and to provide actionable leads through innovative partnership work.

Over the course of the project, which reviewed 12 months of transaction data, Zepz supported the development and validation of risk indicators used to detect suspicious activity and help inform future industry guidance. These insights will enable financial institutions to develop increasingly enhanced profiling and transaction monitoring programs to target, identify and stop financial transactions associated with the sexual abuse of children. The NECC have issued an alert to their partner financial institutions outlining the threat and how financial institutions could aid in detection of this activity.

This initiative contributes to the NCA’s broader work to tackle and reduce the threat and harm caused by child sexual abuse which is increasing in scale, complexity and severity. Combatting child sexual abuse requires a joint approach by policing, government and industry and the wider international community to identify and prosecute offenders who exploit children for financial gain.

Arnab Roychowdhury, Head of Risk & Compliance at Zepz, said: “Cross-border communities rely on being able to move money safely and reliably, which is why trust and security sit at the heart of everything we do. Keeping bad actors out of the Zepz ecosystem is always our number one priority. Proactive work alongside law enforcement organisations such as the NCA plays a critical part in continually evolving our industry leading risk and compliance strategy.”

Hardeep Walker, Deputy Head of Child Sexual Abuse Threat Leadership at the UK National Crime Agency, said: “Establishing and strengthening cooperation between law enforcement and financial institutions like Zepz is crucial to reduce the threat and harm caused by the sexual abuse of children. Implementing measures such as transaction monitoring to detect suspicious transactions and reporting actionable intelligence enhances our collective ability to identify, disrupt and prosecute those individuals who are committing child sexual abuse and to safeguard children from sexual harm.

Our collaboration reflects Zepz’s broader commitment to supporting cross-border communities and strengthening the integrity of the financial ecosystem. Tackling financial crime including that linked to the sexual abuse of children is a collective responsibility across industry, authorities, and society, and Zepz will continue working with partners to help shape a more secure and trusted financial future.

FF NEWS TAKE

Zepz is taking a massive, necessary step in proving that remittance fintechs can match—and exceed—the financial intelligence capabilities of Tier-1 legacy banks. WorldRemit and Sendwave process billions in high-frequency, cross-border peer-to-peer transfers, making them an operational frontline for identifying illicit financial corridors. Under Head of Risk & Compliance Arnab Roychowdhury, Zepz is signaling that technical excellence in compliance means utilizing deep data pools to protect human life, not just tick boxes for auditors.

The timing of this initiative aligns with a broader 2026 global regulatory crackdown on online harms and illicit financial flows. By working directly with the NCA to turn raw transactional data into “actionable leads,” Zepz is setting a definitive corporate standard for fintech social responsibility. For compliance teams across the industry, the lesson is clear: transaction monitoring must evolve to look past basic velocity and threshold alerts. True operational integrity means mapping behavioral anomalies to detect and cut off the financial rails of global criminal exploitation in real time.