MaiGuard — The Trust Layer for African Fintech

MaiGuard is the trust platform for financial institutions in African markets: give every person and business one verified identity, establish customer risk, stop fraud and financial crime in real time, resolve investigations, and explain every decision — on one shared view. Operated by Maiguard Sentinel Limited (RC 9022303), Lagos, Nigeria.

The products

MaiGuard Verify — continuous customer risk. Verify identity (BVN, NIN, CAC, documents, biometrics) and business ownership (directors, beneficial owners), then continuously reassess the customer's risk profile as behaviour, sanctions, PEP status, ownership and devices change.
MaiGuard ID — one verified identity for people and businesses, built once and reused across every product and any app via “Continue with MaiGuard ID”, sharing only what the holder consents to. Consent is per-item, revocable and audited.
MaiGuard Sentinel — real-time fraud and AML. Sub-200ms ML transaction risk scoring and a configurable rule engine returning ALLOW, REVIEW or BLOCK, with a 0–100 risk score and the signals that fired.
MaiGuard Resolve — financial crime operations. Investigate fraud, AML alerts, high-risk customers and suspicious activity, manage regulatory filings, and keep an audit-ready trail from alert to submission.
MaiGuard Assist — an agentic AI analyst that investigates in plain language, explains a score, drafts filing narratives, and proposes actions (allow, block, escalate) for a human to approve.
MaiGuard Pulse — mobile fraud operations. Triage the alert queue, review the evidence, and record an auditable decision away from the web workstation.

Platform overview · MaiGuard Intelligence, an AI operating system that reasons across the whole business, is a separate product.

Core capabilities

Identity verification — BVN, NIN, CAC, document authenticity, face match and liveness, routed per check to the best available provider with failover
Continuous monitoring — scheduled re-screening against sanctions, PEP and adverse media, with re-verification triggers
Real-time risk scoring — ALLOW / REVIEW / BLOCK with a 0–100 score, sub-200ms design target, over a REST API
Fraud rule engine — velocity rules, amount thresholds, geo conditions, AML list checks, AND/OR logic, no code
Shadow mode — run new rules against live production traffic without affecting a single real decision
Entity graph analysis — multi-hop links across customers, devices, IPs and counterparties to surface mule networks and synthetic-identity rings
Behavioral biometrics — keystroke, pointer and device signals from a lightweight browser JavaScript SDK
Case management — review queues, SLA countdowns, assignment and routing, audit logs, RBAC
Integrations — REST API, browser JavaScript SDK, webhooks, database sync, AWS SQS, CSV/JSON batch import, core banking connectors

Who it is for

Payment gateways and PSPs, digital lenders, microfinance banks, mobile money operators, neobanks, e-commerce and marketplaces, BNPL providers, and crypto platforms. MaiGuard is live in Nigeria today and expanding across African markets. See market coverage.

Frequently asked questions

How quickly can I integrate MaiGuard?: Most developers complete a first integration in under 15 minutes: sign up, get API keys, add the SDK or call the REST API, and act on the returned decision.
Do I need a credit card to start?: No. The Sandbox plan is free and uses test keys, so you can build and validate before going live. Live keys activate after KYB approval.
Which programming languages are supported?: A browser JavaScript SDK plus backend SDKs for Node.js, Python and PHP. Any language that can make HTTP requests works against the REST API.
What is shadow mode?: Shadow mode runs new fraud rules in parallel with live traffic to show what decisions they would have made, without affecting any real transaction. Use it to validate a rule before it goes live. It is included on all paid plans.
What is the difference between MaiGuard Verify and MaiGuard ID?: Verify answers “is this real?” — a check a business runs about its customer, billed per call. MaiGuard ID answers “who is this, and what have they let me see?” — a durable identity the holder owns and shares by consent. ID uses Verify as one of its evidence sources.
Where is MaiGuard available?: Live in Nigeria today, expanding across African markets.

Trust & compliance

MaiGuard is operated by Maiguard Sentinel Limited (RC 9022303), Lagos, Nigeria. The platform is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 for information security management, and data handling is aligned with the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023. SOC 2 Type II and PCI DSS are in progress and are not yet held. Tenant data is isolated per customer, retention is configurable, and every action is audit-logged with role-based access control. See compliance, privacy policy and data retention.