AML Compliance for Fintech and Payment Providers Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends AML Compliance Managers, MLROs and Deputy MLROs and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-FFC-024

Before you join: Participants should have working familiarity with payment services, customer onboarding, transaction operations, fraud controls or compliance processes.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Fintechs and payment providers move funds quickly, operate through APIs and intermediaries, and often onboard customers without face-to-face contact. These features can also create exposure to mule accounts, account takeover, sanctioned parties, payment fraud, terrorist financing and laundering through high-volume transactions. Compliance teams must convert regulatory expectations into controls that work at product, customer, transaction and third-party levels without creating unnecessary friction for legitimate users.

This course examines the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing control framework for fintechs, e-money institutions, payment service providers, marketplaces and digital-asset-adjacent businesses. Participants learn to conduct enterprise and product risk assessments; design customer due diligence and beneficial ownership processes; calibrate transaction monitoring scenarios; investigate alerts; file suspicious activity reports; screen sanctions and politically exposed persons; and govern outsourced compliance activities. The course also addresses fraud-AML convergence, payment typologies, correspondent banking expectations, regulator engagement and control testing.

Teaching combines focused instructor briefings with payment-provider cases, alert-review simulations, group analysis of customer and transaction data, and structured application planning. Participants work with realistic scenarios involving merchant acquiring, cross-border remittances, wallet providers, embedded finance and platform payments. They leave with an AML control framework, risk-assessment model, investigation case-file structure, monitoring-rule inventory, sanctions escalation checklist and implementation plan suited to their operating model.

The course is designed for professionals who already work with payments, onboarding, fraud, compliance, risk, operations or financial-crime controls and need practical AML capability for regulated fintech environments.

What you will be able to do

  • Conduct an enterprise AML risk assessment using customer, product, channel and geography factors
  • Design risk-based customer due diligence workflows for individuals, businesses and beneficial owners
  • Calibrate transaction monitoring scenarios using payment typologies, thresholds and alert-quality metrics
  • Investigate suspicious payment activity and document defensible case decisions
  • Prepare suspicious activity reports with clear narratives, chronology and supporting evidence
  • Apply sanctions, PEP and adverse-media screening controls within payment onboarding and monitoring
  • Assess AML risks arising from agents, merchants, banking partners and outsourced service providers
  • Build a remediation plan using control testing findings, ownership and implementation milestones

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Make defensible customer-risk and escalation decisions using documented risk factors
  • Improve alert investigations through structured evidence gathering and case narratives
  • Recognise payment typologies linked to mule activity, fraud and sanctions evasion
  • Contribute informed requirements to onboarding, monitoring and product-control design
  • Prepare for expanded AML, MLRO-support or financial-crime management responsibilities

For your organisation

  • Reduce inconsistent customer due diligence decisions across onboarding channels
  • Improve detection of suspicious payment patterns and connected-account activity
  • Increase investigation quality, auditability and suspicious-reporting readiness
  • Identify control gaps in merchant, agent, partner and outsourced-provider arrangements
  • Create clearer ownership for AML remediation, governance reporting and control testing

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can map core AML obligations to a fintech or payment-provider operating model.

  • FATF risk-based approach applied to payment and e-money business models
  • Money laundering stages mapped to digital onboarding and payment flows
  • Roles of boards, MLROs, compliance teams and operational control owners
  • Regulatory expectations for customer due diligence, monitoring and reporting
  • Payment-provider exposure from speed, scale, remote access and intermediaries
  • Distinguishing AML, counter-terrorist financing, fraud and sanctions control objectives

Participants can produce a documented AML risk assessment with prioritised control actions.

  • Inherent-risk methodology using customer, product, channel and geographic risk factors
  • Risk scoring matrices with likelihood, impact and control-effectiveness ratings
  • Assessing wallets, acquiring, remittances, embedded finance and marketplace payment risks
  • Customer segmentation based on legal form, occupation, activity and expected behaviour
  • Geographic-risk sources including FATF lists, sanctions programmes and corruption indicators
  • Residual-risk decisions documented through rationale, evidence, ownership and review dates

Participants can design risk-based onboarding and customer due diligence processes for payment users.

  • Customer identification requirements for individuals, legal entities and authorised signatories
  • Beneficial ownership verification using ownership charts, registries and documentary evidence
  • Risk-based CDD tiers linked to products, limits and transaction capabilities
  • Electronic identity verification controls, liveness checks and document-authenticity indicators
  • Source-of-funds and source-of-wealth enquiries triggered by customer-risk indicators
  • Ongoing due diligence events for profile changes, inactivity and unusual activity
  • Record-retention schedules supporting audit trails, investigations and regulatory inspection

Participants can assess and control AML exposure created by business customers and distribution partners.

  • Merchant onboarding reviews covering ownership, business model and expected payment activity
  • Website, trading-history and adverse-media checks for merchant risk assessment
  • Agent due diligence covering training, monitoring, incentives and termination rights
  • Prohibited-business lists aligned with legal, sanctions and reputational risk appetite
  • Settlement-account controls for third-party payments and mismatched beneficiary details
  • Periodic merchant reviews triggered by chargebacks, returns and transaction-pattern changes

Participants can specify monitoring scenarios and triage alerts using risk-based decision rules.

  • Scenario inventory covering velocity, structuring, pass-through and mule-account indicators
  • Threshold calibration using customer segments, payment values and historical alert outcomes
  • Peer-group analysis for identifying behaviour outside expected customer patterns
  • Network-link analysis connecting devices, beneficiaries, merchants and funding instruments
  • Alert-prioritisation rules using risk scores, typology indicators and case ageing
  • False-positive analysis using disposition codes, quality assurance and tuning records
  • Model-governance evidence for scenario approval, change control and periodic validation

Participants can identify payment typologies requiring coordinated fraud and AML response.

  • Mule-account indicators including rapid turnover, cash-out and linked-device activity
  • Account-takeover patterns distinguished from customer-initiated suspicious transactions
  • Authorised push payment fraud signals linked to laundering and beneficiary networks
  • Merchant laundering indicators including unusual refunds, split settlements and cyclic flows
  • Cross-border remittance patterns associated with structuring, smurfing and terrorist financing
  • Fraud-AML handoffs defined through shared queues, escalation criteria and feedback loops

Participants can operate screening and escalation controls for sanctions, PEP and adverse-media risks.

  • Sanctions screening points across onboarding, payment execution and customer lifecycle events
  • Name-matching logic using transliteration, aliases, dates of birth and identifiers
  • True-match investigation steps supported by evidence, disposition and escalation records
  • PEP risk assessment considering office, influence, family members and close associates
  • Adverse-media assessment using credible sources, recency, relevance and corroboration
  • Payment holds, rejects and freezes managed under legal and operational procedures

Participants can investigate suspicious activity and prepare clear, evidence-based reporting decisions.

  • Investigation plans framed around suspicion, information gaps and decision deadlines
  • Case-file chronology linking onboarding data, transactions, alerts and external intelligence
  • Transaction-flow analysis tracing sources, destinations, counterparties and rapid movement
  • Evidence standards for screenshots, system extracts, communications and supporting documents
  • Suspicious activity report narratives stating who, what, when, where and why
  • Tipping-off restrictions and confidentiality controls during internal and external escalation
  • Post-report account decisions covering monitoring, restrictions, exit and law-enforcement requests

Participants can assess third-party AML dependencies and establish accountable oversight arrangements.

  • Outsourcing risk assessments for identity vendors, screening providers and operations partners
  • Service-level controls covering alert queues, turnaround times and quality thresholds
  • Due diligence of banking partners, payment processors and correspondent institutions
  • Contract clauses addressing audit access, data retention, incidents and regulatory cooperation
  • Fourth-party dependencies mapped through critical-service and data-flow assessments
  • Ongoing oversight using management information, assurance reviews and remediation tracking

Participants can evaluate AML control performance and prepare a prioritised improvement plan.

  • Three-lines model defining first-line ownership, oversight and independent assurance
  • Management information covering alerts, backlogs, reporting, screening and control failures
  • Control testing plans using samples, walkthroughs, evidence criteria and issue ratings
  • Quality assurance reviews of onboarding decisions, alert closures and investigations
  • Regulatory examination preparation through document inventories, governance records and rehearsals
  • Remediation roadmaps assigning actions, accountable owners, milestones and validation evidence
  • Personal application plan linked to products, risks and immediate control priorities

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Fintech AML risk-assessment template
  2. Risk-based customer due diligence matrix
  3. Transaction monitoring scenario inventory
  4. Suspicious activity investigation case-file template
  5. Sanctions and PEP escalation checklist
  6. AML control remediation roadmap

Who should attend

  • AML Compliance Managers — design and oversee fintech financial-crime control programmes
  • MLROs and Deputy MLROs — strengthen reporting, investigations and governance decisions
  • Financial Crime Analysts — improve alert triage, investigations and case documentation
  • Fraud Risk Managers — address fraud indicators that may signal money laundering
  • Payment Operations Managers — embed effective controls into payment processing workflows
  • Product and Onboarding Managers — build proportionate AML requirements into customer journeys

Skills and tools covered

AML risk assessmentCustomer due diligenceTransaction monitoringSanctions screeningSuspicious activity reportingFinancial crime governance

Tools and standards

FATF Recommendations, FATF Risk-Based Approach, ISO 37301 Compliance Management Systems, Wolfsberg Group CBDDQ

How the course runs

Training methodology

The instructor uses short technical briefings to establish regulatory principles and payment-industry control expectations. Participants analyse realistic cases involving wallet accounts, merchant payments, remittance flows, account takeover and sanctions alerts. Group exercises apply risk scoring, customer due diligence, alert triage, investigation methods and escalation decisions. Simulations develop case-file documentation and suspicious-reporting judgement. Facilitated discussions compare control choices for different business models, followed by individual application planning for participants' own products, workflows and risk priorities.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have working familiarity with payment services, customer onboarding, transaction operations, fraud controls or compliance processes. Experience reviewing customer information, payment data, alerts or operational exceptions is useful. Participants should understand basic AML terms such as customer due diligence, sanctions and suspicious activity, although these are refreshed during the course. Prior MLRO experience, legal qualifications, coding skills, formal audit training or detailed knowledge of a particular national rulebook are not required. The course uses internationally recognised principles and practical payment-provider cases.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

Participants should understand basic payment, onboarding, fraud, operations or compliance processes. The course refreshes core AML concepts, but it is not intended as a first introduction to financial services regulation.

Bring examples of your products, customer types, payment flows and current control questions, subject to your confidentiality rules. A laptop is useful for live online delivery and for working with course templates.

It suits AML, fraud, risk, compliance, payment operations, onboarding and product professionals working for fintechs or payment providers. It is also relevant to managers responsible for merchant, agent or banking-partner controls.

The course focuses on payment flows, digital identity, merchant and agent risk, transaction-monitoring design, mule networks and outsourced control arrangements. General AML principles are taught through fintech and payment-provider decisions rather than bank branch or trade-finance cases.

Participants can use the provided templates to review customer-risk criteria, monitoring scenarios, investigation files and third-party oversight. The final module converts control findings into owned remediation actions and review milestones.

The course contains ten modules of approximately three contact hours, delivered across five 08:30-16:30 training days. Time is divided between instructor input, cases, group analysis, simulations and structured application planning.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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