SendFriend Buys DigiPli to Boost Sanctions Screening and AML Controls

B2B FinTech company SendFriend has acquired U.S. compliance provider DigiPli.

The move will combine DigiPli’s anti-money laundering (AML) model with SendFriend’s cross-border payments solution for financial institutions (FIs) needing access to the U.S. market, SendFriend said in a Thursday (Feb. 2) press release.

With this combination, SendFriend will be able to add more compliance-related features to its platform, according to the release.

“This acquisition brings another level of automation and technology to our sanctions screening and AML controls,” SendFriend CEO and Co-founder David Lighton said in the release. “Our clients and sponsor banks will take comfort in our enhanced technology offering as we continue to scale our platform in 2023.”

FIs were fined nearly $5 billion for AML violations, breaches of sanctions and flaws in know your customer (KYC) systems in 2022. The amount of penalties levied on these organizations for failing to stop financial crimes jumped by more than 50% last year, after having dipped in 2021.

PYMNTS research found that 71% of businesses said they need additional digital fraud solutions, 49% said the issue is most important to their fraud-related concerns and 31% plan to outsource their identity checks.

Organizations that still rely on manual and reactive anti-fraud tools experience slower growth than those using proactive and automated solutions, according to the January edition of the “B2B Payments Fraud Tracker®,” a PYMNTS and nsKnox collaboration.

With DigiPli’s technology, a single trusted partner provides the systems, staffing, tools and data FIs need for a customer onboarding program — all in a bundled package, according to the press release.

This technology enables SendFriend to help not only streamline cross-border payments but also reduce risk for non-U.S. companies that want to send and receive international payments, the release said.

“DigiPli was informed by decades of experience in compliance and international regulation,” DigiPli CEO Jeff Horvath said in the release. “We developed our tech specifically to make it easier for FinTechs to meet their compliance obligations and are excited it’ll be incorporated into SendFriend’s cutting-edge payment infrastructure.”

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