Safaricom and Chainalysis Team Up: AI Targets Wildlife Trafficking, Crypto Gets a Real Test
Safaricom is working with Chainalysis and a group of tech and crypto companies to track money linked to illegal wildlife trade. The plan, announced at an event convened by Prince William, uses AI and blockchain analytics to follow suspicious payments and make wildlife trafficking harder to hide. I’ll be honest: this is the kind of crypto use case that sounds boring until you remember there are actual investigations behind it. Not a slogan. A test.
The group includes Google, Meta, TikTok, Alibaba, PayPal, Chainalysis, TRM Labs, Luno, Vodafone, Vodacom, British Airways, and Heathrow Airport. Google, Meta, TikTok, and Alibaba are the obvious places to watch for illegal listings and related online activity. PayPal, Chainalysis, TRM Labs, and Luno sit closer to the payment trail. Why does this matter? Because wildlife trafficking is not some tiny side hustle running on cash in the shadows. The United Nations Environment Programme has estimated the trade at up to $23 billion a year, and about one million plant and animal species face extinction risk.
Safaricom, Vodafone, and Vodacom plan to add AI to anti money laundering and transaction monitoring across M-Pesa, the mobile money platform used widely across Africa. The aim is narrow: spot transactions that may be tied to poaching networks and trafficking groups. PayPal is involved too. Chainalysis and TRM Labs will use blockchain tracing to follow crypto wallets and payment routes across borders, while Luno brings in exchange-side visibility. My take: the mobile money piece may end up being just as important as the crypto piece.
This is where the adoption signal gets interesting. Crypto analytics companies usually get dragged into abstract fights about surveillance, compliance, or whether crypto is too messy to regulate. Most guides frame blockchain tracing as a compliance cost. That’s only half right. Here, it is being pointed at a real enforcement problem with real victims, which gives it a cleaner use case than the usual market pitch. For investors, I would not treat this as an instant bullish trigger. It is duller than that, and probably more useful. It shows investigators can use blockchain data when criminals move across platforms, currencies, and borders.
The white rhinoceros shows why this tracking matters. Conservation work helped bring the Southern White Rhino population back to about 17,000 after decades of decline, but organized poaching over the past 20 years has put that recovery at risk again. Rhino horn can sell for up to $60,000 per kilogram on the black market, more than gold or cocaine by weight. So no, this is not just a parks-and-patrols story. With that much money involved, poaching becomes a payments problem. Then a logistics problem. Then a laundering problem.
There is also a regulation pressure angle here, though I would not push it too far. Regulators have spent years hearing that crypto enables illicit finance. Counter to the usual advice, the industry should not pretend this concern is imaginary. The stronger reply is more specific: the same public ledgers criminals use can also expose them. Chainalysis and TRM Labs are not making crypto look harmless. They are showing that some parts of it are traceable in ways cash is not. That could help regulators separate legitimate crypto activity from criminal use instead of treating the whole market as one problem. Sentiment around spot Bitcoin ETFs shifted quickly once institutions had a cleaner wrapper. This is quieter, but it points in a similar direction.
David Fein, co-chair of United for Wildlife, said, “What we see from the private sector today is a recognition that the illegal wildlife trade is both an environmental and a business issue.” That framing works because it moves the work beyond donations and awareness campaigns. I think that distinction matters. The companies are using systems they already operate: payments and platforms on one side, analytics, airline networks, and airport channels on the other. British Airways and Heathrow will also run public awareness campaigns to help travelers spot and report suspected wildlife products.
What this means
This partnership gives blockchain analytics and AI a specific anti-crime role. Is this overhyped? For a price chart this week, yes. For the long-term argument that crypto infrastructure can be useful outside speculation, no. It supports the case for financial transparency and illicit finance investigations, especially when money moves through mixed payment routes. Yes, this partly contradicts the usual crypto-libertarian line about less monitoring. Bear with me: targeted tracing is not the same as treating every user as suspicious. If policymakers see more examples like this, they may be more willing to write rules that target bad actors without flattening the whole sector. AML and KYC policy for exchanges and DeFi protocols is the next place to watch.
Watch what the SEC, CFTC, and other regulators say about crypto’s role in financial crime investigations. A clear public acknowledgment of blockchain forensics would matter. Also watch whether banks, payment companies, and governments adopt similar analytics tools. The proof cannot be vibes. It has to be numbers: wallets identified, transactions flagged, cases referred, funds frozen, arrests made. If Chainalysis, TRM Labs, or the coalition publish those results, the industry will have something better than a talking point. It will have evidence.