The global pandemic has caused a radical shift from brick-and-mortar to online. And businesses should not stand still if they want to remain competitive in the new normal. With COVID-19 not slowing down, government restrictions limiting movement to curb the spread of the virus are still enforced. Giving consumers the option to conduct their transactions while being cooped up inside their homes is key for businesses to stay relevant during this pandemic.

But without face to face encounter, how do businesses ensure that the one at the other end of the transaction is who they say they are, that the transaction is not fraudulent, and the list goes on. This is where electronic know your customer (eKYC) would come in handy. But not all eKYC solutions are created equal. A solution that puts a would-be customer through a lengthy or cumbersome onboarding process leads to discontinuance. After all, there’s nothing stopping the potential customer from abandoning the onboarding process – it’s just one cancel button click away.

For an effortless end to end customer onboarding without sacrificing security, when choosing an eKYC solution for your business, it is important to keep these five considerations in mind:

Passive Liveness Detection. Liveness is detected while taking a selfie. No user action is required like blinking, turning the head and so on. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) assures effortless onboarding with passive liveness detection during selfie capture – a marriage between security and ease of doing business.

Data Extraction. Using Artificial Intelligence Character Recognition (AICR) data is extracted automatically from the ID document. This eliminates the hassle of providing details manually while preventing fraud.

Identity Deduplication. An individual can enroll only once as a customer into the system. This prevents fraudsters from using multiple identities to create multiple accounts to commit fraud.

Signature Capture and Verification. Signature captured from the ID document is matched with the digitally captured signature, for example, from a mobile application. Using AI and machine learning, the two signatures are compared. The process requires very limited human intervention or none at all thus, providing a frictionless onboarding experience without the inefficiencies in manual signature verification.

Watch List and Sanctions Screening. To allow businesses to determine if a potential customer is involved in crimes, terrorism, corruption, money laundering or financial sanctions, data including news articles is constantly gathered from different countries and territories. Businesses are provided instant access to government watch lists from around the world and politically exposed person (PEP) watch lists. Screening during onboarding is transparent to the potential customer and does not impact customer experience.

To sum things up, it is crucial to establish true identity without compromising user experience. This can be achieved with an eKYC solution that uses the best technology – creating strong security for customers and businesses in a world where fraud is widespread.

Information about our eKYC solution can be found here.