The PCI SSC brings together more than 700 organisations across over 60 countries to develop and maintain the security frameworks that protect billions of payment transactions daily. Smartcomply is now among the first Nigerian companies in its category to participate in that process, giving Africa a more direct voice in conversations that have historically been dominated by institutions from North America, Europe, and Asia.
What the Membership Actually Means
Being an Associate Participating Organization is not a ceremonial title. It gives Smartcomply a working role in shaping new PCI security initiatives, collaborating with international members on emerging threats, and contributing to the evolution of standards that financial institutions across the globe are required to follow. The company will also attend and participate in the Council’s annual forums, where policy direction and technical guidance are actively developed.
For a company that serves over 100 financial institutions across Africa through its Adhere and Seequre platforms, that access matters practically. The standards Smartcomply helps shape at the global level are the same ones its clients in Africa need to comply with when handling card payments and cross-border transactions.
Africa Has Been Missing From This Conversation
The significance of Smartcomply’s admission goes beyond the company itself. Africa’s financial ecosystem has been evolving rapidly, driven by mobile money adoption, instant payment systems, and growing cross-border trade. Yet the international bodies that set payment security standards have historically had limited African representation, meaning the frameworks they produce do not always reflect the realities of markets where mobile-first banking, informal financial activity, and infrastructure constraints shape how payments actually work.
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Smartcomply Chief Executive Gbemisola Osunrinde framed the membership in exactly those terms. As digital payments continue to expand, the collaboration needed to keep them secure has to include the voices of markets where that growth is happening fastest. Africa cannot afford to simply receive standards developed elsewhere and adapt them after the fact.
PCI SSC Executive Director Gina Gobeyn echoed that thinking, noting that the Council’s standards help organisations secure payment data and respond to increasingly sophisticated attacks. Having Smartcomply inside that process, she said, strengthens both awareness and adoption of those standards across markets the Council had limited reach into before.
The Platforms Doing the Ground Work
Smartcomply’s two core platforms serve different but complementary functions. Adhere focuses on compliance management, helping financial institutions navigate the complex and often overlapping regulatory requirements they face across multiple jurisdictions. Seequre addresses cybersecurity, giving organisations tools to monitor, detect, and respond to threats targeting their payment infrastructure.
Together, the two platforms serve as the operational backbone for over 100 financial institutions on the continent, a client base that gives Smartcomply both the scale and the on-the-ground insight that makes its contribution to global standards genuinely useful rather than theoretical.
Growing Beyond Africa
The PCI SSC membership comes at a moment when Smartcomply is actively broadening its geographic reach. The company recently opened operations in the United Kingdom, adding a presence in one of the world’s most regulated financial markets. That expansion into the UK, combined with membership in a global standards body, positions Smartcomply as a compliance and cybersecurity player operating at an international level rather than a regional one.
For African fintech companies that have long been told they need to meet global standards to access global markets, Smartcomply’s trajectory offers a different model: help write the standards, then build the tools that make compliance achievable for institutions across the continent.
Why Payment Security Is Getting More Urgent
The stakes around payment data security are rising. Digital payment volumes are growing across Africa and globally, and so are the attacks targeting them. Data breaches in financial services carry enormous costs financial, reputational, and regulatory and smaller institutions in emerging markets are often the most vulnerable because they have the least capacity to invest in dedicated security infrastructure.
Standards bodies like the PCI SSC play a critical role in setting baseline expectations that lift the floor for everyone in the payments ecosystem. Having an African company with deep continental experience contributing to that baseline is a development that matters for the entire region, not just for Smartcomply’s own business ambitions.