Proto joined the Namibia International Cybersecurity Conference in Windhoek from 22 to 24 April 2026, contributing to three sessions on consumer protection infrastructure, anti-scam systems, and governance frameworks for the digital economy.
Curtis Matlock, Founder and CEO of Proto, was across all three sessions – presenting with Adam Csabay from FNA on scam reporting-to-recovery for vulnerable citizens, moderating the panel on building anti-scam infrastructure as a national utility, and joining the policy roundtable on regulatory and governance levers for national asset protection.
Scam reporting-to-recovery for vulnerable citizens
Curtis Matlock and Adam Csabay, Global Head of Banking Engagement at FNA, made the case that the speed of digital finance must be matched by the speed of protection. For vulnerable citizens, the pipeline from a scam report to its resolution needs to function reliably – and at pace. A critical constraint shapes everything: there is roughly a 24-hour window before stolen funds become nearly impossible to recover. Rapid reporting is not a feature of anti-scam infrastructure – it is the foundation.
The session drew directly on the joint Proto and FNA Anti-Scam Centre solution, which won the G20 TechSprint 2025 award for cybercrime and fraud response, combining Proto's multilingual AI agent workflows with FNA's real-time fund tracing capabilities.
Curtis Matlock, Founder and CEO, Proto, said: "Anti-scam infrastructure should function as a national utility – not something each institution builds alone, but shared infrastructure with clear reporting channels and accountability across the network."
Building anti-scam infrastructure as a national utility
Curtis moderated this panel alongside Ernst Naub, Principal Analyst for NPS Oversight at the Bank of Namibia, and Mbopewa Kauuova, Payment Specialist at the Payments Association of Namibia. The discussion examined what it would take to move beyond fragmented institutional responses towards shared, systemic infrastructure – where reporting channels, accountability frameworks, and recovery processes are coordinated at a national level.
A recurring theme was the importance of stakeholder alignment before building. Effective anti-scam infrastructure requires every relevant institution – regulatory, financial, and enforcement – to be part of the same coordination framework from the outset. An equally important challenge was raised around citizen reporting: many people simply do not know where to report fraud. When reporting is unclear, incidents go unreported – and when incidents go unreported, the true scale of the problem stays invisible.
Proto and FNA first presented their integrated scam detection and recovery solution at Global Payments Week in Brasília in 2025, demonstrating how multilingual AI agent complaint handling connects directly to real-time fund tracing to close the gap between victim reporting and institutional response.
Adam Csabay, Global Head of Banking Engagement, FNA, said: "The financial sector has made enormous progress on speed and access. The next frontier is making sure that when something goes wrong, the response infrastructure is just as capable."
Regulatory and governance levers for national asset protection
Curtis joined this policy roundtable alongside members of parliament, ministry officials, and cybersecurity practitioners from across the region.
Three challenges came up repeatedly:
- Governance frameworks need to be stress-tested through simulation before a crisis occurs, not after
- Sovereign hosting requires real infrastructure investment to be a practical reality, not just a policy direction
- Clear incident-reporting channels need to function across institutional boundaries, even where legislation has not yet caught up
The urgency was palpable. Namibia is not yet prepared for the scale of cyber threats already materialising – let alone the surge expected with the rollout of instant payment systems. The call from policymakers was direct: building resilient infrastructure cannot happen in isolation. It requires international collaboration and private sector expertise, and it requires starting now.
Consumer protection as digital infrastructure
A thread running through all three sessions was the relationship between financial inclusion and consumer protection. Faster, more accessible payment systems create new opportunities – but they also create new exposure, particularly for citizens who are newer to digital finance and have less margin for error when something goes wrong.
Coordination is what makes the difference. Infrastructure that isn't connected – across institutions, across reporting channels, across the public and private sectors – will always lag behind the threat. The decisions being made now in markets like Namibia will shape what digital financial protection looks like for years to come.
Proto works with central banks, financial regulators, and public institutions across emerging markets to build the AI agent workflows that sit between an incident and its resolution – complaint intake, dispute routing, fraud redress, and accountability reporting. The conversations in Windhoek reinforced that this infrastructure is not a feature to be added after a digital financial system is built. It is part of what makes that system trustworthy.