Sling Money is on a mission to connect billions of people worldwide through effortless, instant, global payments using blockchain technology. By partnering with Orca, they overcame critical compliance barriers to launch in over 20 countries. Here’s how the right fraud solution unlocked global scale and empowered financial access in the Global South.

Sling Money is an app making global money movement as easy as sending a text. Founded in 2022 by Mike Hudack and Simon Amor, the company harnesses stablecoin technology and the Solana blockchain to enable seamless money transfers to over 145+ countries. Launched publicly in September 2024, Sling Money is on a mission to connect the world to an instant global payment system.

With Sling Money, users can send money using just a recipient’s name without needing complex bank details. The platform supports fast, low-cost conversions between fiat currencies and stablecoins like USDP, while its self-custodial wallet model gives users full ownership of their funds. Integration with local banking systems ensures effortless deposits and withdrawals.

From day one, Sling Money embedded financial crime (FinCrime) prevention and regulatory compliance into its core infrastructure. The co-founders prioritised building a secure, transparent platform where compliance wasn’t an afterthought but a foundation. 

To explore more about how Sling Money navigated the challenges of scale, compliance and fraud prevention, we sat down with Sling Money’s Head of FinCrime, Grace Moloney. 

Inside Sling Money’s compliance strategy: Building FinCrime from the ground up

Grace joined Sling Money as one of its earliest employees, attracted by its mission and deep-rooted focus on doing compliance the right way.

“We were building a global product from day one, which meant compliance had to be baked into everything we did.”

With a background in international payments, Grace quickly recognised the limitations of traditional FinCrime tooling. These systems simply weren't designed to handle the nuanced behaviours of non-traditional payment infrastructure common in Sling Money’s target markets.

The challenge: A compliance roadblock in key markets

For a company so deeply committed to financial inclusion - particularly across Africa and Latin America - Sling Money quickly encountered a critical obstacle. Its existing FinCrime tools could not support the niche, local payment methods essential for operating in these high-potential regions. Without the ability to monitor and manage risk in these unique financial ecosystems, Sling Money’s expansion was effectively blocked.

The solution: A strategic partnership with Orca Fraud

To overcome this barrier, Sling Money partnered with Orca Fraud, leveraging its financial crime solutions purpose-built to support diverse payment rails and emerging markets. 

Rather than divert resources to build fraud detection in-house, Sling Money applied their disciplined efficiency approach - partnering with a specialist to build iteratively and strategically, ultimately passing those savings onto their customers.

Commenting on the integration, Grace shared: “Within less than 60 days, we had a robust transaction monitoring solution that allowed us to open the African and LatAm markets and operate in about 20 to 25 countries straight off the bat - that was phenomenal.”

Orca removed what Grace described as a major blocker to expansion: “We didn’t think we had enough information to be able to protect the ecosystem we were entering into without Orca.” 

Commenting on the Orca team’s responsiveness, Grace added: “The ability to move fast is so important for a team like ours.” Giving an example, she shared: “We asked for a data point to build a rule and they shipped it immediately. This just wouldn’t happen with a legacy provider.” 

Her confidence in the partnership’s long-term value was clear: “There’s never going to be a time that I’ll go to another provider to support us in Africa and Latin America. I’ve found a solution that will come with us, grow with us and scale with us.”

Ultimately, integrating with Orca removed a critical barrier to Sling Money’s compliance roadmap and enabled rapid expansion into previously inaccessible markets without compromising safety or speed. 

Navigating risk in the Global South

Operating in the Global South has given Sling Money invaluable insight into how people engage with financial products - and how that differs dramatically across regions. Grace explains, “Things that look like fraud in one country may be completely legitimate in another.”

Orca Co-founder and CEO Thalia Pillay emphasises the importance of deep, market-specific localisation: “Effective fraud prevention starts with understanding local context. At Orca, our mission is to build adaptable solutions tailored to the unique behaviours and payment methods of each market. Real-time payment systems like PIX need real-time fraud prevention.” 

While card fraud remains prevalent globally, mobile wallet fraud presents very different characteristics. For instance, device sharing - typically flagged as high-risk in Western contexts - is often a necessity in lower-income or communal settings.

“Device sharing is terrifying from a FinCrime perspective but it’s totally normal in many of the communities we serve.” 

Additionally, in many African and LatAm countries, users often conduct dozens of micro-transactions a day. These informal but legitimate payments reflect adaptive financial systems developed in the absence of reliable banking. To support this, Orca offers an omnichannel approach - monitoring wallets, bank transfers, cards and crypto activity in order to deliver a full picture of user behaviour across channels.

Another key challenge lies in currency sensitivity since many fraud systems treat all currencies equally. For example, a rule designed to flag transactions over $5,000 may also flag anything over 5,000 Naira, effectively capturing nearly every transaction in the market. Without contextual logic, these systems can generate excessive false positives and restrict legitimate activity - especially in high-volume, low-value markets. Grace shares how crucial this is: “You can’t just apply rules from other markets. We had to learn from the ground up.”

Sling Money took a deliberate approach: observe local user behaviour first, then build context-aware models. Orca’s flexibility allowed them to do just that, helping them understand regional norms before setting targeted rules. In part, this came as a result of Orca’s work with M-PESA wallets in Kenya, whereby the teams collaborated to develop fraud rules tailored to the nuances of mobile money usage. With those foundations in place, Sling Money was able to activate PIX in Brazil almost instantly by applying Orca’s contextual model-building approach in a completely different, but somewhat similar, ecosystem. 

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How Orca made the difference

Sling Money’s previous provider spent months attempting to support local payment rails - without success. Orca succeeded in less than two months, becoming a critical partner in their rapid expansion. 

The team shared some of the key advantages of working with Orca, including: 

Speed and agility

Orca delivered a fully functional, market-ready fraud monitoring solution in under 60 days - a rare turnaround in a compliance space often characterised by lengthy timelines and delays. Sling Money was already sending data and fully integrated with Orca within two days  - well ahead of launch. This speed enabled them to enter new markets rapidly without compromising on safety or regulatory standards. In a high-growth environment, agility like this isn't a bonus, it's a necessity.

Deep expertise

Partnering with Orca enabled Sling Money to achieve a nuanced understanding of financial crime patterns in high-risk and underbanked regions. Unlike generic providers, Orca understands that fraud in the Global South looks different, which is why it has and continues to build systems to reflect that. This market-specific knowledge helped Sling Money identify and respond to threats without alienating legitimate users or applying overly rigid rules.

Aligned mission

Both companies share a commitment to financial inclusion, particularly in vulnerable and underserved communities, strengthening the partnership with a shared belief: that compliance shouldn't be a barrier to access, but a safeguard that makes inclusion possible. This alignment of values means both teams are always headed in the same direction.

Resource efficiency

Sling Money's disciplined efficiency approach - building iteratively to pass savings onto customers - made Orca an ideal partner. Instead of building complex fraud detection tools in-house, Sling Money was able to rely on Orca’s best-in-class systems. This allowed them to keep their team lean while freeing up engineering and product resources to focus on innovation, user experience, and scaling their core platform, effectively accelerating their roadmap without diluting internal focus.

Feature depth

Orca’s platform equips Sling Money with powerful tools for clear, actionable oversight across regions. Features like Watchlists for managing specific users or risk profiles, jurisdictional filters for market-specific insights, and Whale Watcher - an AI-powered anomaly detection tool that flags unusual activity across corridors - help the compliance team stay ahead of emerging threats. 

Looking ahead: Innovation and the future of compliance

Sling Money acknowledges that, given the scale and speed of its operations across highly diverse markets, no single tool can comprehensively cover every compliance need. Rather than seeing this as a limitation, they view it as an opportunity to build a layered approach, with specialised solutions like Orca’s forming the backbone of a broader, integrated fraud and compliance system. 

Recently, Sling Money launched virtual accounts in the US and Europe in partnership with Bridge, a financial infrastructure provider recently acquired by Stripe. Reflecting the depth of their collaboration, Orca has enhanced its tools to monitor these virtual accounts, demonstrating ongoing support as Sling Money continues to grow and innovate. 

Partnering with Orca has been pivotal in overcoming significant market entry challenges, enabling rapid expansion into key African markets, and providing invaluable insights into user behaviour in the Global South, all while supporting their core mission of financial inclusion.

Sling Money’s expansion into 70+ countries in under a year isn’t just a growth story - it’s a compliance success story. By collaborating with Orca, the company overcame mission-critical roadblocks and gained the insight, flexibility and tools needed to operate safely at scale.

For any fintech aiming to serve diverse, underserved regions, Sling Money’s story underscores a key truth: the right fraud prevention partner doesn’t just reduce risk, it unlocks opportunity and enables growth.

Looking to expand into Africa and LatAm with confidence? Partner with Orca Fraud for tailored fraud prevention solutions.

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