Kingston Unity Uses Yoti Biometrics to Authenticate UK Trust Fund Kids

Yoti will be working with the Kingston Unity to help British teenagers gain access to their Child Trust Funds (CTF). The CTFs are tax-free savings accounts that were set up for all children born in the United Kingdom between September 1, 2002, and January 2, 2011, as part of a program that was intended to encourage parents to save money for their children.

To that end, the Kingston accounts were each seeded with £250. The children would then be able to claim that £250 (and any money their parents added) when they took control of their account when they turned 18.

The first batch of recipients officially crossed that threshold in September, which means that financial institutions are now starting to pay out the accounts. It also means that they need a way to verify the identities of the people claiming them. That’s where Yoti comes into play. In the past, individual citizens would need to bring their identity documents to the bank to get them verified in person, or send in certified copies of those documents through the mail.

Thanks to the partnership with Yoti, Kingston customers will instead be able to complete the identity check remotely with the free Yoti app. To do so, they simply need to set up an account with their mobile number and a secure PIN, and then take a selfie and a photo of a government-issued identity document. Yoti uses facial recognition to compare the selfie to the image on the ID to make sure the two are a match. The user can then scan a QR code to confirm their identity without sharing any other personal information.

Kingston Unity is not the only financial institution that will be accepting Yoti for CTF identity checks. OneFamily announced that beneficiaries could use the app to claim their accounts back in May.

In the meantime, Yoti has continued to support youth-oriented initiatives. The app is currently being used for identity verification on Yubo’s social media platform, while the company itself has partnered with New Zealand’s MyMahi platform to help prepare students for the digital world.

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November 6, 2020 – by Eric Weiss