Liquid Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of ELEMENTS Inc. and a major firm in Japan’s digital identity space, has retained its position as the country’s top electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) provider for the sixth consecutive fiscal year. According to ITR Corporation’s ITR Market View: Identity & Access Management / Personal Authentication Security Market 2025 report, Liquid holds the largest vendor revenue share in Japan’s eKYC market, with a 66 percent share in banking and 96 percent in telecommunications deployments.
StoneX Adopts LIQUID eKYC for FOREX.com Japan
In an important commercial milestone announced this week, StoneX Group Inc., a NASDAQ-listed global financial services company, has adopted Liquid’s LIQUID eKYC platform for its Japanese subsidiary, StoneX Securities Co., Ltd. The implementation will be used to verify customer identities during account openings for FOREX.com, StoneX’s FX and CFD trading platform in Japan.
StoneX Securities transitioned from its previous identity verification provider to LIQUID eKYC in an effort to improve verification success rates. The company cited the platform’s advanced image recognition AI, which delivers real-time feedback to users on document capture quality – flagging issues such as low brightness or poor framing – as a key reason for the switch. StoneX expects the upgrade to approximately double account opening completion rates by reducing user drop-offs during the verification process.
LIQUID eKYC incorporates biometric verification technologies launched in 2021 and has since been refined using data from over 130 million completed identity checks. The platform includes IC-chip reading for Japan’s MyNumber ID cards and automates compliance with regulatory mandates under the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds and Financial Services Agency guidelines for non-face-to-face onboarding.
Technology Expansion and Market Consolidation
FOREX.com, which serves over one million users across 180 countries, has previously reported high abandonment rates during the photo submission stage of its eKYC process. LIQUID eKYC’s automated guidance and streamlined user experience are expected to help overcome that hurdle and increase conversion rates significantly.
Liquid’s success is underpinned by a rapidly growing client base of approximately 600 organizations and the completion of over 130 million identity verifications. The company’s scale was further reinforced in January, when parent company ELEMENTS Inc. acquired Polarify, a biometric verification provider previously backed by SMBC. The acquisition expanded Liquid’s technology portfolio and consolidated its leadership in Japan’s identity tech sector.
The platform’s emphasis on compliance and security has grown increasingly important amid emerging threats to KYC systems. A recent investigation into dark web operations targeting biometric data has underscored the need for resilient solutions. LIQUID eKYC is engineered to withstand such threats through its AI-powered risk detection and robust architecture, tailored for Japan’s strict identity governance standards.
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May 28, 2025 – by the ID Tech Editorial Team
