Simplify international identity verification and grow your business

Verifying customers’ identities is critical for regulatory compliance and preventing fraud on your platform. But this can be particularly challenging for global digital finance businesses. Rules and regulations around identity verification and anti-money laundering (AML) vary from country to country. Plus, products should be localised to meet the expectations of consumers in every market you operate.

As your business grows, it’s critical to be able to verify customers no matter where they’re from and in a way that is compliant with the local regulations in every country you expand to. From our work with hundreds of leading fintechs and businesses, we’ve identified common stumbling blocks businesses face with digital identity verification internationally and how to overcome them.    

Challenge #1: Different jurisdictions, little data uniformity

There is little uniformity of how personal identifiable information (PII) is formatted in different countries. For instance, something as universal as an address varies in format from country to country. As a result, businesses often struggle to efficiently process identity data given its varied formatting. 

The solution:

To operate in other countries, digital finance businesses must be able to collect information according to the specification of the local jurisdiction. Your verification process should be capable of not just collecting identity data but also automatically accounting for the variations that exist across the countries you operate in today and may operate in the future.   

Challenge #2: High cost of building localized experiences 

While identity data is formatted differently in every country, consumers and their expectations of digital identity verification today are consistent – the entire experience should be smooth and quick. Though customers are not always bound by borders, most businesses solely focus on verifying customers who are residents of their country of operation. As you expand into new countries, localizing the customer experience can make or break your success in a new market. 

Localising your product and verification flow can help provide the experience global customers expect. But building localized experiences often requires considerable development resources, iteration cycles, and expertise. 

The solution:

Leverage a verification solution that makes launching into a new country fast, no new code required. When you’re ready to enter a new market or grow globally, you should be able to activate your identity verification solution with the check of a box. Plus, the verification experience should be automatically localized to the country in which you’re expanding. For example, the product should dynamically update to ask a customer for their social security number, national insurance number, or social insurance number depending on the country.

Simplify international verification with Plaid

Last May, we announced Plaid Identity Verification in the United States, a complete  identity verification and CIP solution that makes verifying identities as easy as linking financial accounts to apps with Plaid. Now, Plaid IDV is available for businesses in the United Kingdom. With Plaid, digital finance businesses in the UK can confirm a customer’s PII, identity document, and liveness while combating fraud with a built-in anti-fraud engine. 

Localised UX, global coverage, high pass rates

Plaid IDV is built to quickly verify good customers while keeping bad actors out. With Plaid, you can automatically verify identities in as little as 30 seconds and achieve a pass rate of 91%+ without increasing risk. The verification UI and fields are localised for the UK so your customers quickly move through the verification flow and begin transacting with your business. 

Additionally, Plaid IDV can deliver higher pass rates as a result of our global reach. With Plaid, you can verify customers from over 200 countries and territories and automatically verify more than 16,000 types of identity documents. 

Built-in anti-fraud engine

Plaid IDV is powered by an intelligent anti-fraud engine that analyzes hundreds of risk signals and attributes – from email, phone and IP address to device history and behavioral risk – to help prevent fraud on your platform. 

We look at factors like if a phone number is registered with external accounts, whether an email was part of a data breach, whether the individual is using a VPN, or how fast a user types. Plus, we look at aggregate device ID or IP address activity across our entire network to gain a holistic understanding of a user’s risk. We constantly evolve our fraud detection model to help you combat the latest threats and emerging fraud tactics. 

No-code management experience

Plaid IDV provides a better experience not only for your customers but also for your compliance teams. With Plaid IDV, you gain no-code management experience that makes ongoing compliance management easy. 

Through our dashboard, you can add a new country simply by checking a box. You can create and update verification flows with our no-code editor. Define risk rules and granular success criteria tailored to your business’s risk tolerance levels. Plus, with Plaid IDV, you can implement dynamic and seamless waterfalls to provide the lowest friction experience for good actors, while still maintaining robust and rigorous fraud prevention tools to reduce bad actors.

If you're an existing Plaid customer, IDV is built into the Plaid Link SDK, requiring minimal integration effort to get started.

Automated watchlist and PEP screening 

For ongoing AML compliance, use Plaid Monitor to automatically scan customers against regularly updated government AML and politically exposed persons (PEP) lists. Monitor ensures the highest accuracy and least false positives thanks to our proprietary data enrichment and international name-matching algorithm.

Get started today

Interested in improving your international verification approach? Get in touch to learn more about how Plaid can help.

Complex verification requirements or legacy, country-specific tools don’t have to hamstring your growth. With Plaid, you can verify global customers and launch in new countries in a day. Identity Verification is built into the Plaid Link SDK so it’s easy to get started. Reach out to the Identity Verification team today.