In a country striving to “bank the unbanked” and achieve genuine financial inclusion, the phone number has quietly surpassed the bank account in importance. While not everyone possesses a bank card, nearly everyone has a SIM card. This shift has positioned mobile money as the future—serving as a gateway for millions into the financial system.
The rise of fintech has been remarkable, filling gaps that banks couldn't reach. However, as fintech has grown quickly, one thing has fallen behind: fraud protection that suits our needs, not just copies of Silicon Valley solutions. Current efforts—where they exist—are often fragmented, reactive, and spread across different platforms. There hasn't been a single, unified approach to proactively combat fraud at the scale and speed that mobile money requires.
That gap is where Centry began.
The Spark
Centry didn’t start as a “big platform idea.” It started with a headache—one that many Ghanaians know too well: mobile money fraud.
We all know the story. A random call, a too-good-to-be-true SMS, someone pretending to be from a telco or bank. It’s not high-tech cybercrime—it’s people exploiting people. Human-engineered fraud. And for the longest time, victims had little defense other than “be careful next time.” That didn’t sit right with us.
The original idea behind Centry was simple: find a way to proactively combat mobile money fraud. Not just reacting after people lost money, but putting systems in place that could warn, detect, and block fraud before it spread.
At first, this looked like a reporting tool. But very quickly, we realized two things:
- We weren’t the first to think of crowdsourced reporting in Ghana. Others existed.
- Relying only on reports from the public wasn’t enough. People report late, or sometimes not at all. Meanwhile, fraudsters never stop moving.
Building Something Different
That’s where Centry began to shift. Instead of being only about user reports, we asked: how can we proactively source fraud attempts from multiple platforms?
So Centry started pulling in fraud data from different angles:
- Scouring social media where scams often surface.
- Structuring fraud entities (names, numbers, accounts) into a living database.
- Using pattern recognition to connect dots that a single report might miss.
The result? Centry morphed into more than a reporting tool—it grew into a fraud detection engine. Reports are still important, but they’re now just one part of a bigger engine designed to stay one step ahead of fraud, not just document it.
The Risk Score System
One of the most powerful shifts in Centry’s evolution has been the introduction of a risk score–based fraudulent entity system.
Here’s how it works:
- Every fraud entity—whether it’s a phone number, name, account, or business—gets tracked in the system.
- Verified reports, repeated mentions, and suspicious behavior all add to its risk profile.
- Over time, each entity is assigned a fraud risk score that reflects how likely it is to be part of fraudulent activity.
This means instead of treating every new report in isolation, Centry builds a bigger picture. A single scam attempt might not look like much—but when linked to 10 others using the same number or name, the system lights up.
That means individuals, businesses, and institutions can finally make fast, informed decisions:
- Should I trust this number?
- Is this account safe to deal with?
- Does this entity need to be flagged or blocked?
Where We Are Today
Centry is still young, still growing, but it’s no longer just an “idea.” Today, we’re building:
- A fraud detection engine that works for Ghana and beyond.
- A structured, risk-scored database of fraud entities.
- Insights that individuals, businesses, and institutions can actually use.
It’s not Ghana’s first crowdsourced fraud reporting initiative, but it is one of the first to take on the challenge of blending human input with proactive fraud sourcing and risk scoring—with the discipline and vision of a startup.
The Road Ahead
The fight against fraud is endless. Fraudsters evolve every day—and so will we.
The challenges ahead are big, sometimes herculean. But guess what? We’re excited to take them headfirst. For Centry, the mission is clear: to build the technology and systems that make fraud prevention proactive, collective, and smarter.
And we’re just getting started. 🚀
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