Why Risk and Compliance Are the Backbone of Sustainable Fintech Growth 

How Hydrogen Embeds Risk and Compliance into Its Operating Model

1. Advanced Fraud Detection and Risk Controls
   Hydrogen employs sophisticated, high‑assurance systems to enhance its fraud detection, monitoring, and screening capabilities. These measures are designed to function at scale within Nigeria’s complex fintech ecosystem, delivering both security and reliability.

Key applications include:
• Behavioral monitoring: User activity is continuously assessed to detect deviations—such as unusual login locations, device changes, or transaction frequency spikes—that may indicate compromise.
• Real‑time transaction screening: Transactions are evaluated against a range of dynamic risk indicators, including transaction velocity, unusual value thresholds, and inconsistent user patterns.
• Network‑level detection: Our systems analyze transaction flows and account relationships to detect signs of organized fraud, including mule accounts and synthetic identities.

What sets Hydrogen apart is the integration of these high‑end controls across product operations and compliance oversight—ensuring consistency, responsiveness, and resilience throughout the entire payment infrastructure.

2. Compliance‑by‑Design in Product Development
   At Hydrogen, compliance is not tacked on at the end. It is a core part of our product development life cycle:
   • Early‑stage risk review: Before any new feature is scoped or approved, our compliance and risk teams assess it for regulatory exposure and operational risk.
   • Embedded compliance controls: Our developers implement safeguards that are mapped to relevant legal frameworks—such as CBN guidelines, PCI‑DSS, and the NDPR.
   • Post‑deployment reviews: Once a product is live, periodic control testing and independent audits help ensure it remains compliant as laws and market behaviors change.

This proactive posture means we build with safety in mind from the outset—not as a reaction to incidents or penalties.

3. Enterprise‑Wide Risk Ownership
   Hydrogen promotes a risk‑aware culture throughout the organization:
   • All employees receive onboarding and ongoing training on regulatory obligations, data handling, and internal escalation protocols.
   • Compliance and risk officers are embedded in cross‑functional teams, participating directly in product, tech, and operations meetings.
   • There are clear lines of accountability for decision‑making, and tools are in place to support transparent reporting of risk concerns or potential breaches.

This ensures that compliance is not confined to one department—it is shared, lived, and prioritized company‑wide.

4. Partnership with Regulatory and Industry Bodies
   Hydrogen maintains open lines of engagement with:
   • The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to stay informed of upcoming policy changes and licensing conditions
   • The Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) to ensure that our privacy practices align with the latest data governance rules
   • Other stakeholders, including NIBSS, law firms, fintech associations, and payment service providers

These relationships ensure that our approach is not only reactive but also anticipatory, as we actively monitor the direction of regulation both locally and globally.

5. NIBSS Integration: Strengthening National Payment Integrity
   As a licensed fintech operator, Hydrogen’s infrastructure is integrated with the NIBSS platform—Nigeria’s central switching system. This integration enables:
   • Real‑time settlements via NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP)
   • Account validation and identity checks for onboarding and transaction authentication
   • Fraud detection support, leveraging data from industry‑wide reports and intelligence shared by NIBSS

This collaboration is critical, given that NIBSS processes billions of naira in daily transactions and sets the operational benchmark for Nigeria’s digital payment ecosystem.