How Should Electronic Financial Businesses Verify Foreign Users? A Practical Guide to Global eKYC

How Should Electronic Financial Businesses Verify Foreign Users? A Practical Guide to Global eKYC

This is the fourth article in our Practical eKYC Guide for Electronic Financial Businesses series.

In the previous article, we explored how electronic financial services can connect ID verification and Liveness to better address identity theft and unauthorized use.

This time, we are expanding the scope to another important user group: foreign customers.

As more financial services begin serving international users through prepaid cards, cross-border remittance, foreign exchange, and global payment services, the ability to verify foreign customers remotely is becoming increasingly important.

However, foreign customer verification is not as simple as replacing a domestic ID card with a passport.

Depending on the user’s nationality, the type and format of the submitted identity document may vary significantly. Businesses may need to process different languages, document layouts, and data fields, while also determining whether the submitted document is legitimate and whether the person completing the verification is the actual document holder.

So, what should electronic financial businesses consider when building a foreign-user eKYC process?

Why Is Foreign Customer KYC More Complex Than Domestic Verification?

In a domestic KYC environment, businesses can usually limit the range of identity documents they need to process.

Once foreign users are introduced, that changes.

In addition to passports, users may submit national identity cards, driver’s licenses, and other forms of government-issued identification. Even documents of the same type can differ by issuing country in terms of layout, data fields, and language.

This means the first question in foreign-user KYC should not simply be:

“Does the solution support passport OCR?”

A more important question is:

“How broadly can the solution process the identity documents our actual foreign customers submit?”

Can the eKYC Solution Process the IDs Your Customers Actually Use?

One of the most fundamental requirements in foreign-user eKYC is document coverage.

If your service supports foreign customers, you should evaluate not only the nationalities of your current user base, but also the countries you may expand into in the future.

Questions to consider include:

• Which countries’ identity documents are supported?

• Can the system process more than passports, such as driver’s licenses and national IDs?

• Can it recognize information written in different languages?

• Can it reliably extract the required data fields from different document formats?

If document coverage is limited, users from certain countries may require manual review or may be unable to complete remote verification at all.

For this reason, global ID coverage should not be viewed simply as a feature count. It can directly affect both verification completion rates and operational efficiency for foreign users.

Reading Passport Data and Verifying a Passport Are Not the Same Thing

OCR is still an important starting point for foreign-user verification.

Automatically extracting information such as name, date of birth, nationality, document number, and expiration date from passports or overseas identity documents can reduce the amount of information users need to enter manually.

However, as discussed in the second article of this series, being able to read the data on an identity document is not the same as being able to trust the document itself.

Even when the information on a submitted passport image can be extracted successfully, that does not necessarily mean the document is authentic.

A submitted image may have been manipulated, with information or photographs altered from the original.

This is why foreign-user eKYC should connect:

ID data extraction → document verification → forgery and tampering detection

For services that accept identity documents from multiple countries, it is important to evaluate not only how many countries are supported, but also how deeply each document can be verified.

What Types of Forged IDs Are Actually Detected During Verification?

The importance of forgery and tampering detection can be difficult to understand through technical feature descriptions alone.

In real-world eKYC environments, businesses may receive not only legitimate identity documents, but also manipulated document images where photographs or personal information have been altered.

ARGOS has also detected identity documents suspected of forgery or tampering during real verification processes.

Below are examples of forged or manipulated identity documents detected during ARGOS verification, including image manipulation, copies of identity documents, and documents recaptured from mobile or PC screens.

These examples show why foreign-user KYC should go beyond simply asking whether an overseas identity document can be read.

A reliable verification environment should be able to process identity documents from many countries while also distinguishing legitimate documents from potentially risky or manipulated submissions.

Even If the ID Is Valid, Is the Person Verifying the Actual Document Holder?

Passing document verification does not necessarily complete the foreign-user KYC process.

The next question is whether the person currently completing the verification is the same person shown on the identity document.

By comparing the facial image on the passport or identity document with a selfie captured during verification, businesses can confirm whether the user and document holder are the same person.

This can be particularly important for foreign users, because some of the identity verification methods commonly used for domestic customers may not be equally applicable to international users.

Foreign-user eKYC should therefore answer two questions:

Can this identity document be trusted? and Is the person submitting it the actual document holder?

Verification Attempts Using Photos or Videos Should Also Be Considered

Even if the facial image in the ID and the submitted selfie appear similar, businesses still need to determine whether the face was captured from a real person during the verification process.

Photos, faces displayed on screens, or prerecorded videos can potentially be used in abnormal verification attempts.

This is where Liveness Detection becomes important.

Liveness Detection helps determine whether a real person is actively participating in the verification process.

A foreign-user eKYC flow may therefore look like this:

Passport or overseas ID submission
→ Data extraction
→ ID verification and forgery/tampering detection
→ Face Match
→ Liveness

When these steps are connected into a single flow, businesses can verify not only the identity document itself but also the actual person completing the verification.

User Experience Also Matters in Foreign-User Verification

User experience is another important consideration that can easily be overlooked in foreign-user KYC.

A verification process that feels familiar to domestic users may not be equally intuitive for international customers.

If the flow is too complicated or repeatedly asks users to recapture their identity document, even legitimate users may abandon the process.

For services with users from multiple countries, it is therefore useful to monitor:

• Which countries have the highest verification failure rates

• Which identity documents generate the most recapture attempts

• At which stage users most frequently abandon verification

• Whether manual review is concentrated around specific countries or document types

A strong foreign-user KYC environment is not simply one that supports many identity documents.

It should also help legitimate foreign users complete verification without unnecessary friction.

A Foreign-User eKYC Checklist for Electronic Financial Businesses

If your service already supports foreign customers or plans to expand to them, consider reviewing your current KYC environment using the following questions.

Global ID Coverage

• Does the solution support identity documents from the countries where our key customers come from?

• Can it process more than passports, including different national identity documents?

• Can it continue to support us as we expand into additional markets?

Document Verification

• Can it accurately extract information from overseas identity documents?

• Can it identify potential document forgery or tampering?

• Does the verification process stop at OCR alone?

User Verification

• Can the system compare the face on the identity document with the actual user?

• Can Liveness Detection confirm that a real person is participating in the verification process?

Operations

• Can we review verification results by country and document type?

• Can we identify recurring verification failure patterns?

• Is foreign-user verification creating excessive manual review workload?

Foreign-user eKYC is not simply a matter of adding passport OCR to an existing domestic KYC process.

It requires a broader structure that connects global ID coverage, document verification, actual user verification, user experience, and operations.

Support Global Identity Documents in a Single eKYC Environment

ARGOS ID Check supports more than 200 countries and over 4,000 global identity documents, enabling remote identity verification using passports and a wide range of overseas IDs.

Beyond OCR, ARGOS connects identity document verification, forgery and tampering detection, Face Match, and Liveness within a single verification flow to help businesses verify both the submitted identity document and the actual user.

For services such as prepaid cards for foreign tourists, cross-border remittance, foreign exchange, and global payments, it is important to first assess whether your current KYC environment can adequately support the countries and identity documents used by your actual customers.

If you are preparing to expand your foreign customer base or are experiencing operational challenges such as verification failures and manual review, review your current eKYC environment with ARGOS.

Already using an eKYC solution?

In the next article, we will explore how electronic financial businesses can re-evaluate their existing eKYC environment based on verification completion rates, ID processing performance, forgery and tampering detection, Liveness, global ID coverage, manual review, and operational costs.