Trust is built when customers can get help

Trust in a payment system can be tested in seconds. A person reports a missing payment, an unauthorised transfer or a scam, then waits for an answer. If reporting is difficult and the case disappears into a system the customer cannot see, trust can be lost just as quickly.

Why reporting a problem is the real test

For women in particular, barriers such as language, limited time and the need to visit a branch or government office can make it harder to report a problem. When complaints go unreported or unresolved, customers may quietly lose confidence in formal financial services.

That’s the problem Noella Dushime, Proto’s Head of Global Partnerships, brought to Financial Inclusion Week 2026 (FIW2026). Noella represented Proto – one of three global finalists in Accion’s Trust by Design Fintech Challenge – on the “Scaling Trust: What’s Working in Trust-Centered Fintech Across Markets” panel, alongside Grand Prize winner Evan Tanotogono, co-founder and CEO of Rey Assurance (Olvo AI), and fellow finalists Lina Maria Montoya Madrigal (Corporación Interactuar) and Natasha Jethanandani (Kaleidofin), moderated by Buhle Goslar with panellist Isabelle Carboni, representing the Gates Foundation.

The four finalists each take a different approach along the customer journey: Olvo AI on decisioning, Interactuar on access and onboarding, Kaleidofin on creditworthiness and monitoring, and Proto on recourse.

What Proto brought to the stage

Proto’s approach is to make recourse easier to access and follow. Its AI agent grievance and recovery layer lets people report complaints, fraud and scams in their own language through voice, WhatsApp, SMS or web. Cases are routed through workflows with service-level tracking, reference numbers and status updates. Institutions can manage cases, while regulators gain visibility into complaint patterns across the system.

The service operates across the Philippines, Rwanda, Namibia and Mozambique. Its multilingual design includes Kinyarwanda, Tagalog, Cebuano and Oshiwambo, with female voice models used for sensitive conversations – user testing, for example, informed the development of Proto’s female Kinyarwanda voice model.

Illustration from Proto’s Trust by Design finalist announcement.

The results so far

The numbers show what changes when people can report a problem and see it through:

• In Rwanda, women’s share of complaints rose from below 10% to 20%, while average resolution time fell from 35 days to 4 days
• In the Philippines, women make up 59% of users of Proto’s AI agent, which handles about 89% of grievances without human intervention
• Across its services, Proto records more than 1.19 million unique users yearly
• Proto’s partner FNA has demonstrated the potential of coordinated fund recovery in Malaysia, where the share of funds frozen rose from 0.5% to 30% in about seven months – a 60-fold improvement

“Recourse isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s what makes everything else worth trusting. Access, credit, insurance – none of it holds up if a customer can’t get help when something goes wrong. That’s the piece of the trust problem Proto set out to solve.”

– Noella Dushime, Head of Global Partnerships at Proto

What happens next

Scaling this work will require consumer-protection rules that support complaints in local languages and across accessible channels; routine use of sex-disaggregated complaint data by regulators; and fund tracing and freezing capabilities designed into payment rails from the start.

About the Center for Financial Inclusion

CFI is an independent think tank housed within Accion. Through research and global convenings – including Financial Inclusion Week – it works to advance inclusive financial systems worldwide.

About the Trust by Design Fintech Challenge

Run by Accion, the Trust by Design Fintech Challenge recognises fintechs, financial institutions and technology providers that design for safety, transparency and trust, with a particular focus on closing the trust gap for women who have historically been excluded from financial systems. Proto was named one of three global finalists in September 2026.

About Proto

Proto deploys inclusive AI workflows in emerging markets. The company is trusted by governments and enterprises to automate workflows for anti-scam centres, patient experience, and other mission-critical usecases. Proto's clients include central banks, remittance services, and hospitals protected with the company's SOC2, ISO27001, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance. Proto's text and voice AI datasets power high performance for local languages beyond the limits of large language models. Headquartered in Canada, Proto operates from regional offices in the Philippines and Rwanda.