As digital asset payment service providers intensify efforts to combat money laundering and fraud, a new partnership aims to close remaining gaps in financial compliance. UPay, a fintech company offering an integrated ecosystem of digital asset services, has announced a collaboration with WIDTH, an AI-based compliance and risk decision intelligence platform. The partnership will enable UPay to leverage WIDTH's on-chain risk screening product, DART, to analyze wallet addresses and transactions, providing a deeper layer of scrutiny.
Limitations of Traditional KYC
Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures are fundamental in verifying platform users and filtering out bad actors. However, UPay points out that KYC alone does not establish trust in the origin of funds deposited into a verified user's wallet. This limitation can hinder the ability to address cross-platform risks, where funds may originate from high-risk sources outside the platform's direct oversight.
DART's Role in Risk Assessment
DART offers wallet address risk screening (KYA) and transaction risk screening (KYT) capabilities. These tools assess an address's risk characteristics and its connections to high-risk entities, helping investigators trace the sources and destinations of transaction funds. Each result from DART is traceable to its score, matched rules, and transaction paths, enabling reviewers to understand why a particular address or transaction flagged for attention.
“Our aim is to give reviewers more than a risk flag,” said Owen Yang, CEO of UPay. “We want them to understand what triggered it and see the transaction history behind it, so they can decide what needs further investigation.”
Supplementing, Not Replacing, Existing Processes
UPay emphasizes that DART's analysis will supplement, rather than replace, its existing risk review process. The company's own customer due diligence, independent review, business decisions, and regulatory obligations remain the core of its compliance framework. This approach ensures that automated risk screening enhances human oversight without undermining it.
Chionh Chye Kit, Co-Founder & CEO of WIDTH, highlighted the focus on usability: “Our focus is on making risk findings useful to the people reviewing them. Scores, matched rules and transaction paths help explain why an address or transaction needs attention.”
Future Scope and Evaluation
UPay and WIDTH plan to define DART's scope for various products and service regions, covering supported assets, blockchain networks, and business arrangements. The evaluation will be based on feedback from actual use, allowing the partnership to refine the tool's application across different use cases.
This collaboration underscores the growing importance of advanced risk screening in the digital asset space, as regulators and industry players seek to bolster trust and integrity in financial transactions.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
