Veriff and Valr: fighting fraud, staying compliant, and delighting customers with a crypto pioneer

Valr, a leading crypto exchange with more than a million users worldwide, needed an identity verification partner to power their growth in a way that ensured they stayed compliant with an ever-changing regulatory picture.

About Valr

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, Valr is a pioneering global crypto exchange that has a mission of revolutionizing finance for humanity by creating a frictionless financial world. This mission, and the company’s dedication to creating a slick and intuitive user experience, has clearly resonated with customers – the platform quickly surpassed the milestone of having more than a million users, including around a thousand corporate and institutional investors.

Teddy Williams, Valr’s Compliance Manager, explained more: “We’re working towards a frictionless financial world, that’s our guiding light, and there are a couple of things that set Valr apart: product excellence, being obsessed with building innovative tools that users love; our security and compliance, and taking proactive approach to compliance, not just reacting to regulations but helping shape them as well; and our customer first approach, and genuinely caring about helping our users succeed.”

There was strong support from the team throughout the implementation and the API documentation was clear, which made that integration straightforward for developers. From a migration perspective, it was one of the smoothest projects that we’ve had.”

Teddy Williams Compliance Manager Valr

What business problem did Veriff solve for Valr?

Compliance has always been front and center for Valr, but there are a number of other key teams working together at Valr to scale quickly.

“My role is in compliance,” Williams explained. “And so it is crucial for me that we found a solution that ensured we satisfied all the know-your-customer requirements of the regulators in the various jurisdictions we operate in around the world.

“But there was more to it than that. At the time we were scaling aggressively. We had to find a provider that could meet compliance requirements without slowing the business down. We were very intentional about wanting an onboarding process that wasn’t just compliant, but also user friendly. 

“Another big pain point for African exchanges like us is document diversity. We see a lot of identity documents from different African countries – Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and so on – and many global KYC vendors struggle with recognizing them.”

What made the difference to Valr when choosing Valr?

A shared obsession with customer experience was the main factor that stood out when Valr’s team were evaluating Veriff as a partner.

As Williams explained: “Veriff’s user interface is clean, clear, and optimized for both mobile and desktop. You’d be surprised how many providers missed the mark on that. 

“Another thing we loved about Veriff is how you can guide the user through the journey.  You can tell them to adjust the lighting, recommend the camera angles, flag issues in real time, and all of this reduces user frustration and abandonment. We saw a real drop actually in KYC drop-offs after we switched to Veriff and that’s a win, not just for compliance, but for acquisition too.”

Another factor was the ability to evolve and adapt to the changing fraud landscape.

“We were really clear that we needed something intelligent and constantly evolving,” Williams continued. “The crypto world moves fast and is a constant target for fraud. You now have AI-generated documents, fake biometrics, deep fakes. We’ve seen it all. But we are protected by Veriff’s liveness detections and then biometric matching that doesn’t just look at the face, it evaluates the texture, the blinking, the lighting, all in a matter of seconds. This gives us peace of mind that real humans are actually signing up.”

And the final factor was the speed with which Valr was able to get Veriff implemented into their tech stack.

“The implementation was so quick that we were up and running within days,” Williams said. “There was strong support from the team throughout and the API documentation was clear, which made that integration straightforward for developers. From a migration perspective, it was one of the smoothest projects that we’ve had.”

“We’ve run some massive growth campaigns at Valr, things like referral programs, giveaway initiatives and trading competitions. Each one has driven tens of thousands of users to the platform in a short space of time. That kind of surge could easily overwhelm a weak onboarding system, but Veriff copes with it. No problems, no down time – whether we’re seeing a few hundred signups or thousands in a day. That gives our marketing and growth teams the confidence to go full throttle. They know the verification process won’t be a bottleneck.”

Teddy Williams Compliance Manager Valr

What was the impact of implementing Veriff?

The biggest impact of Valr’s partnership with Veriff can be summed up in one word: confidence. The security and stability Veriff brings to the onboarding process has given Valr’s internal teams the confidence to be able to scale.

“What has really impressed us as well was how well the system has handled the volumes, especially during a high sign-up period,” Williams said. “If I remember correctly, it was around the festive season when we first partnered with Verif. People were on holiday, the markets were buzzing, and Bitcoin was trying to break above the $20,000 mark again for the first time since the 2017 rally. So there’s a lot of hype and activity in the crypto space at the time and despite that surge in signups, Veriff didn’t skip a beat. 

“The tool scaled effortlessly and allowed us to keep the onboarding experience smooth and fast, which is crucial in crypto. Our users want in now. They want to have that account now, not in 24 hours.

“That sort of performance gives our internal teams the confidence to power on with their growth initiatives. We’ve run some massive growth campaigns at Valr, things like referral programs, giveaway initiatives and trading competitions. Each one has driven tens of thousands of users to the platform in a short space of time. That kind of surge could easily overwhelm a weak onboarding system, but Veriff copes with it. No problems, no down time – whether we’re seeing a few hundred signups or thousands in a day. That gives our marketing and growth teams the confidence to go full throttle. They know the verification process won’t be a bottleneck.”

About Veriff

Veriff is a global identity verification platform helping businesses build trust online. Our AI-native technology combines automation and human expertise to quickly and accurately verify users worldwide with minimal friction.

Trusted by leading companies like Blockchain, Bolt, Starship, Trustpilot, and Webull across finance, marketplaces, mobility, gaming, and other industries.

Our trust infrastructure helps businesses stay compliant, prevent fraud, protect users, and scale globally, enabling a safer, more transparent internet for everyone.