eKYC — Electronic Know Your Customer enters the real world Most businesses in the digital space know and operate around Know-Your-Customer (KYC) rules for identification and verifying identities. But, many guidelines have not adapted to things like the metaverse and digital transactions. While modifying laws to make them more applicable is possible, many countries have established electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) regulations to match digital and mobile realities. In general, eKYC refers to fully digital processes that use identity verification solutions or digital ID systems. In Indi ..read more

Covid changed the way businesses interact and meet new customers. This comes with ensuring trust, so everyone involved is protected. But, how do you choose the right identity verification provider to do this? What are the costs and differences? In this piece, we will explain how identity verification services work and dive into the differences between providers. Identity Verification Is Broken The last two years have seen many “startups” shift into the identity verification space. This has caused marketing costs to reach new customers to skyrocket. This cost is being passed onto business ..read more

Covid changed the way businesses interact and meet new customers. This comes with ensuring trust, so everyone involved is protected. But, how do you choose the right identity verification provider to do this? What are the costs and differences? In this piece, we will explain how identity verification services work and dive into the differences between providers. Identity Verification Is Broken The last two years have seen many “startups” shift into the identity verification space. This has caused marketing costs to reach new customers to skyrocket. This cost is being passed onto business ..read more

Cryptocurrency made a roar in 2020 and 2021. Investors saw very nice returns and countries like India saw massive adoption from retail investors. The United States saw 44% of crypto owners adopting it for the first time that year. With the world’s largest economy, how crypto regulations are defined in the U.S. will significantly impact global crypto adoption. Investors are continuing to pile money into Canadian cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds despite the sector losing more than US$1-trillion in value globally so far in 2022. Canada has about 40 crypto ETFs — including bitcoin and ethereu ..read more

Elon Musk pictured as giggling baby using deepfake technology.The Issue A team that used a type of “penetration testing” against digital identity providers, has found that deepfakes easily fooled the onboarding process. In a report published on Wednesday, researchers with Sensity, a security firm focused on deepfake detection, demonstrated how it was able to bypass an automated “liveness test” by using AI-generated faces. KYC verification is utilized in a wide array of industries including banking, fintech, insurance, crypto, and gambling. Sensity tweeted out footage of its demonstration a wee ..read more

When COVID-19 started, most of the world went into lockdown, but we still needed to transact with local and large businesses. This pushed many into the digital-age and catapulted the ones that were already there, to be the leaders. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), from a survey May 2021, in collaboration with Grant Thornton LLP showed that more than half the organizations polled uncovered more fraud than usual since the beginning of the pandemic. And 20% of those organizations detected a significant increase in fraud crimes. These changes will not be temporary. A ..read more

Anti-money laundering (AML) is a term that is used a lot, but most of the world is not in the financial services sector. So, we are going to break it down and some of the terms that come with AML. The regulations are broad and each country has different ways to manage them. But, the principles evolve around making sure funds that are deposited are coming from a source that is not touched by terrorists and fraudsters. The aim is to keep the “dirty money” from every entering the financial system. European Union (EU) AML Regulations The European Commission (EC) enacted its first AML Directiv ..read more

Biometrics are what make us unique as humans. These are things like walking patterns, fingerprints, facial features and voice. Identifying someone via these characteristics help verify people in a digital world. After verification, others can believe to a level of certainty that the person is who they say they are. They can also grant and allow access to devices and data. Why use biometrics and risk compromise? The argument can be made for biometrics for verification like Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) on your financial accounts for example. Biometrics can secure your devices and d ..read more

Before the days of smartphones and even basic computer scanners, asking someone to verify an ID document by just looking it, they probably would have laughed. But, now this is being done digitally and with no human eyes. This presents challenges of trust on both sides. Let’s Get Digital The facts are astonishing, there are currently around 4.6 billion internet users. Around 2 billion people are ‘’unbanked’’, or are ‘‘thin file’’ customers. Without their credentials on record, businesses need to verify these users’ identities each time they access a service, which could be up to ..read more

Donald Trump portrayed in the Simpsons Another acronym…we know, but this time it means screening foreign nationals and presidents, something very important to any business onboarding flow. Most developed countries require that organizations perform a detailed politically exposed person (PEP) and sanction check when signing up new customers. In the United States, the definition of a PEP is someone who holds a senior position of public trust or people close to them, such as family members, professional associates, or people who conduct transactions on their behalf. In the UK, however ..read more