How to create an identity verification process

Anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) requirements are unique for each business. As a result, it’s vital that you design and create an identity verification process that suits your specific needs and requirements. 

To help you understand more about how the identity verification process works, we’ve created this guide. As well as discussing why verification is important, we’ve also outlined how our identity verification platform works and the things you need to consider when building your own identity verification process.

What information needs to be verified?

Generally speaking, the identity verification process ensures two things. In the first instance, it checks that the person who is attempting to access your services is real. Secondly, it confirms that the person who is attempting to access your services is exactly who they say they are.

By verifying the identity of a user, you can prevent fraud. You can also prevent someone with a false identity or stolen identity from accessing your services.

In the online world, there are several different ways to verify an identity. Of course, unlike in a shop, there’s no physical interaction between the service provider and the client. But, by using an online identity verification solution like ours, you can verify IDs in seconds.

Our solution verifies that:

• An ID is real and has not been tampered with
• The information on the ID matches the individual in question
• The person uploading the ID is also the person on the ID
• The session or user is ‘live’
• A user is not prohibited from using your services because they’ve been sanctioned

Using an identity verification platform

Here at Veriff, our online identity verification solution provides a thorough verification process and handles compliance on your behalf. By leaving identity verification to us, you can focus on doing what you do best.

Our solution provides an end-to-end verification service. This is accomplished in three simple steps:

Verification flow

During this stage of the process, user data is gathered for analysis during the verification sessions. The information gathered from the user will depend on the document they provide for verification purposes (usually a passport, ID card or driving license).

Although our identity verification solution makes this part of the process look simple, a lot of work happens behind the scenes to make sure that verifications are accurate and don’t negatively impact your conversion rates. This background work includes browser and device analytics, optional background video checks, and other data cross-checking methods.

To help you even further, we:

• Allow you to select between 40 languages and dialects
• Verify 10,000+ government-issued IDs from 190 countries
• Automatically collect the category of driver’s license as an additional data point, if required
• Help you customize web and mobile flows so they align with your branding
• Can add or remove steps for your users
• Include the option for background video recording, which allows us to conduct advanced fraud prevention checks
• Use machine learning technology to assess client sessions in real-time and guide users during photo-taking steps

Verification engine

During this stage of the verification process, the data that was collected from the customer is analyzed. We understand that a one-size-fits-all solution does not work for verification. This is why we provide a number of optional features that make it possible to scale fraud prevention up or down.

Our verification engine can be configured to enable the checks you need. Options include:

• Network and device analytics
• Automated data extraction
• Manual and automated ID checks
• Biometric analysis
• Liveness checks
• PEP and sanctions checks

Verification platform

Once a customer has started the verification process, live session statuses and results can be viewed in Veriff Station. As well as viewing session statuses, you can also manage multiple integrations and automate the flow of information with webhooks in one place. On top of this, you can also restrict data permissions to keep your user data secure.

Building your process

Here at Veriff, we understand that the identity verification process depends on the needs of the business. While an online retailer may wish to simply verify the age of a shopper who wishes to purchase alcohol, a crypto business needs to comply with stringent AML and KYC legislation.

For this reason, the identity verification process you create must be bespoke to your requirements. On top of this, it must also be simple for the user to navigate. Due to this, when creating your process, you should consider the following points and steps.

Keep the process short 

Generally speaking, the longer the conversion process, the more customers will drop out of the flow. Due to this, the identity verification process you create should be as short as possible and contain only a few steps. 

After directing your customer to your flow, you should ask them to take either one or two photos of the ID they’ve selected. At this stage, you should be clear about the photos you need from them, the quality of the photos you require, and the information that needs to be visible. If necessary, you can also ask them to input some basic data and then scan their document. This is a process that works well for biometric passports.

Finally, ask them to snap a selfie and confirm everything is fine. Once everything is confirmed, your identity verification platform can complete the verification and send the customer back to you. 

Conversion rates

When building your own verification process, you need to keep an eye on conversion rates.

Although best practice for converting customers is to shorten the conversion funnel (as we mentioned above), regulatory requirements such as KYC compliance laws or the European PSD2 directive may require extra steps to be added to the process.

Due to this, you need to be smart about the way you guide your users through verification. By pushing certain steps to the background, you can reduce the amount of work your customer has to do while still meeting compliance laws.

One example of how this can be achieved is with live background video. While the user completes their steps, live background video handles liveness checks and gets multiple angles of the photographed ID. This means you can avoid asking the user for multiple photos.

Speak in a language they understand

When asking customers to be transparent about who they are, you need to speak in a language they understand. Due to this, your verification process needs to be localized.

Offering consistent and customizable language support is crucial to keep conversions high. It also helps make sure that your users know exactly what’s expected of them during verification.

Build trust wherever you can

Users want to know that their information is safe and secure. This is understandable because they’re providing you with photos of their government-issued document.

As a result, reassuring your user goes well beyond writing supportive copy. To encourage as many users as possible to go through the verification process, you should also create visual clues that will establish trust and authority. These can include GDPR badges and videos that show your employees going through the steps.

Other subtle ways to establish trust include maintaining your visual brand throughout the process. To help with this, we offer SDK customization options that can help stop customers from feeling like they’re being redirected to a third-party site.

Provide user guidance

Finally, once you’ve created your own identity verification process, you should actively help guide your customers through it. By providing useful and helpful tips to your customers, you’ll boost your conversions and make the process straightforward.

Book a consultation with Veriff

As you can see, our identity verification process makes verifying IDs and ensuring compliance simple. Plus, you can also tailor your process to suit your industry and brand.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can create an identity verification process for your business, get in touch with us today and book a personalized demo.