Evaluating your needs
Before selecting a provider, assess your needs. The solution you choose depends on your audience. Key criteria for evaluation include:
- KYC vs KYB: Are you verifying a single person or many? KYB often involves parallel verification of multiple individuals. The distinction between verifying a user signing up for your service and a distant beneficial owner for a business entity is critical.
- Mobile vs Desktop: Consider the preferred device of your users. Assess if starting on a desktop, redirecting to mobile, leveraging the webcam, or utilizing a mobile app is suitable.
- Demographics: Evaluate your audience's tech savviness. Some people may prefer standard document uploads over video verification. Consider the fraud resilience of different methods and whether your customer base is global or localized.
- Volumes and Prices: Be mindful of yearly package offerings. Some providers may have minimum purchase volumes, which can be challenging for KYB processes with lower verification requirements. Look for pay-as-you-go pricing if volume visibility is limited.
Regulatory requirements
Your business's location, customer base, and license type may necessitate specific verification methods. Let’s decipher common norms and acronyms:
- eIDAS: An EU Regulation that came into effect between 2016 to 2018, governing online identity verification for individuals and businesses.
- PVID: A 2021 standard by the ANSSI (National Safety and Security Agency in France) ensuring face-to-face level reliability for identity verification.
- QES: Qualified Electronic Signature, the gold standard for protection and compliance in identity verification.
Criteria for selecting an ID verification service
It is recommended to build a scorecard when choosing an ID verification service that will allow you to grade providers on the dimensions that matter for you.
- Approval Rate and Processing Speed: Aim for a solution balancing user acceptance and speed. Synchronous solutions offer instant results, while asynchronous solutions with human intervention may yield higher pass rates.
- Coverage: Obtain a list of supported documents by country, paying attention to pass rates and language considerations for non-Latin alphabets.
- User Experience: Consider translations, ease of capture, and security trade-offs. Balance security features like video with user-friendly options.
- Features: Assess additional features beyond verification. Look for duplicate detection, custom data retention policies, analytics dashboards, and ask about the provider's technology roadmap.
- Quality of the API: Verify that the API adheres to modern standards, is developer-friendly, and has clear and updated documentation.
- Support and Service: Ensure reliable support during and after implementation. Ask about communication channels and ideally have a designated contact for direct communication.
Identity verification methods
Different methods offer different levels of security and impact differently the user experience. Choose the right method depending on your regulatory requirements and your specific context.
- Simple OCR Verification: It’s a cost-effective method for extracting data but it lacks comprehensive verification.
- ID Verification (or a document-not-present method): Allows users to upload document photos for more advanced checks on authenticity with computer vision and machine learning techniques. This is where the real identity verification starts. This is a user-friendly option but it presents flaws from a security and compliance perspective.
- ID Document Capture: The difference with the previous option is that the user needs to take a photo of their document when he signs up for your service, ensuring that the document is present at that time.
- Biometric Verification: Combines document capture with a selfie to verify biometric information. This is quickly becoming the standard in identity verification.
- Video Liveness Verification: The highest certification level, requires a video of both the document and the user. This is required for certifications such as PVID.
Evaluating ID verification service providers
It can sometimes feel like an opaque world, as only very few providers will display their prices directly or give you the opportunity to try their solution without hopping on a call with you. To assess the quality of ID verification services, we recommend:
- Getting referrals: Speak to other customers and get their opinions. Ask for the perspective of both the business and the technical teams.
- Online reviews: Websites like G2 or Capterra can be helpful. Gartner and Forrester are also a potential source of information but will mostly feature the incumbents.
- Testing: Try to evaluate the solution by trying them on a diverse set of cases and documents. This is the best way to assess whether results are in line with your expectations.
Conclusion
With many options out there, choosing the right provider for you can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. If the process looks daunting, or if you need to verify other document types such as proof of address, consider a solution like Dotfile.
Dotfile consolidates in a single platform different identity verification methods that you can mix and match based on your needs. Instead of having to negotiate with different vendors, you only need a single integration and contract. This is why solutions like Dotfile are ideal for complex KYC or KYB processes that require many verification types. Book a demo to learn more about the ID verification services we offer.
