Guest Post: How to Choose the Best Identity Verification Partner

This is a guest post composed by Oleg Vaisman, Marketing Manager for Regula Forensics.

Searching for perfect IDV software is not an easy task, the market is quite competitive. With that being said, how should you choose a trustworthy provider? 

Offering services online is not a trend, but a necessity. Being sure you work with legitimate customers is the challenge. Even if regulation-wise there is no obligation to know your customer, verifying your user is an important step. First of all, you have to be sure customers are who they say they are while onboarding them; secondly, you should detect fraudsters. Below we discuss how to manage that. 

Do not compromise the level of security

To begin with, you should carefully estimate which level of security to choose and which elements you would like to check and collect. Differences on that step might be tremendous; for instance, delivery service might do only age verification, on the other hand, financial institutions should do the entire KYC procedure. 

HINT: do not choose a provider who asks you to sacrifice either seamlessness of the user experience or security; both should go hand-in-hand. Even though more steps for ID and identity check must be taken, the verification process should be frictionless and stress-free for the end-user. 

Global approach

Delivering services remotely means working for the entire globe. Check carefully if the coverage of the provider responds to your needs. Not only does the number of identity documents matter, but hence also the number of languages supported is a big deal. When we say “document coverage,” it is important to understand that it should be both country-wise coverages as well as ID document-type coverage. For instance, for one country there could be more than 20 document types of government-issued and globally accepted ID cards. 

HINT: choosing a provider who offers automated ID type authentication can decrease abandonment rates due to time concerns.

ID verification as plug-and-play

Another huge point is integration. Choosing an identity verification solution that brings more pain than benefits is not an option. Integration should be plug-and-play. Of course, it would be best to define the options on how to integrate a provider in advance, in order to choose the correct one. For instance, you may need IOS SDK or WEB. However, good providers care about all types of users; therefore, choose the ones who cover most of the options in order not to be limited at scaling afterward. 

HINT: it would be best to choose a provider who can offer a trial license as well as demo products to check how that software runs on your end. Moreover, choose an on-premises solution only, in order to be on the safe side with regards to the security issues. 

Choose a partner over a provider

Getting back to the levels of security, sometimes it is obligatory to check data from a variety of sources. For instance, data could come from biometric verification via selfie vs. document photo vs. RFID chip data. Comparing that data should be possible in order to comply with some regulations. It would be best if your provider can give you freedom of customization. Building software out of modules you need. Moreover, it is better to have everything in one place, namely having one SDK from one provider for Identity verification. Using SDKs from multiple providers for biometric verification should not be an option. 

HINT: Choosing a partner is better than choosing a provider. It is visible from the first contact; if the provider has an in-house team ready to support you anytime going beyond bug-fixing, that is a great sign. 

At the end of the day, finding the right identity verification provider is of utmost importance. A mistake can be harmful for a variety of reasons. First of all, you can encounter regulatory issues if your provider would not cover something. Secondly, once a solution is integrated, changing the core is always a challenge. You can try to stick to the hints and advice written above, to choose the correct one.  Moreover, we prepared a DEMO page with the Regula SDK, which you can try on any device or integrate for free to any of your apps or web services for a test, and therefore decide if that solution is the one for you.

Try it NOW:  https://api.regulaforensics.com/