In the Digital landscape of this century, businesses are moving towards remote onboarding to get an extensive reach of their customers. They provide their services to different countries all over the world. In this context, scammers take advantage of technology and mischief businesses with fake IDs, counterfeits, and forgeries. Document verification provides a complete process to organizations for quick and safe customer onboarding by validating the authenticity of the documents provided by the customers. It is crucial for organizations that deal with value transactions such as banks, financial institutions, and crypto firms. In this blog, we are going to discover how document verification can mitigate the risk of fraudulent activities for organizations and enhance customer onboarding experience.
Document Verification: A Quick Review
Document verification is a process that is used to validate the identities of real users by verifying their identity documents. This process can be done in both ways i.e. physically or remotely/online. Nowadays customers prefer a quick and easy document checking without any physical visits or hassles involved. That’s why organizations prefer online document verification for the onboarding of new customers. It is also an easy and cost-effective way for organizations instead of hiring a large team of professionals.
Verification Documents
Several documents can be used for online document verification. These documents are selected according to the type of the business or industry and its requirements.
Following are the different types of documents that can be used:
1. Identity Documents
These documents include identity cards, passports, and driver’s licenses and act as proof of an individual’s identity.
. Address Documents
These documents include bank statements, utility bills, credit card statements, and rental agreements and provide evidence about the actual location of the user.
. Employment Documents
These documents include payslips and employment contracts and provide information about the employment history of the user.
. Education Documents
These documents include certificates, degrees, and transcripts awarded by educational institutes and confirm the qualifications of the users.
. Financial and Legal Documents
These documents include bank statements, tax returns, divorce papers, and property papers and provide a financial record of the user.
Key Elements Of Document Verification Process
A document Verification process consists of the following major elements:
. Document Authentication
The first step in document checking is verifying the authenticity of documents against different specific variables such as stamps, holograms, rainbow coloring prints, and MRZ codes. The documents without stamps, holograms, and signatures or documents not issued by any regulatory authority are considered fake and called illegitimate documents. Documents that have been accessed or stolen are classified as false documents. Photoshopped or modified documents can also be detected during the authentication process. Document attestation is also essential for some legal and financial documents.
. Identity Verification
After validating the authenticity of the verification documents, the information provided by them is compared with the credentials provided by the user. If both match with each other the verification is confirmed.
How Document Verification Works?
An automated verification system is required by organizations to work for the digital document verification of the users. This system is called document checker. It is used to process the documents automatically for verification and validation. A series of steps is followed by the document checker to validate the documents.
. Collection of Data
The users are advised to submit the images of their verification of documents through their mobile or webcam. The user is also required to submit a selfie for face recognition.
. Extraction of Data
The desired data is extracted from the documents using optical character recognition(OCR) technology.
. Evaluation of Data
The photo on the document is compared with the selfie of the customer and other checks are applied to the gathered documents and information. With the help of the latest technologies such as Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Machine Learning(ML), these checks confirm that the provided data is genuine and authentic. Liveness check confirms that the individual is real and alive.
1. Verification of Data
If the credentials of the user match with the extracted data, verification is declared successful and a validation message is sent to the user.
Final Verdict
The rise of digital transactions and global integration has increased the need for an efficient and effective document verification process. Organizations use this process for customer onboarding to make it simple, fast, and smooth. It reduces the chances of fraud, and identity theft and protects organizations from financial damages. It is a prerequisite for the successful compliance of Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti Money Laundering, and Countering Terrorism Financing (CTF) regulations. This process uses advanced technologies to meet the challenges created by spoofing, deep fakes, and other criminal activities.
