Know Your Customer - Deep Dive - Series 3 : How ARGOS helps customer
Hello. This is ARGOS Team. In this final installment of our Know Your Customer walkthrough, we're going to take a look at how ARGOS helps customers with eKYC.
If you missed the last installment, please click the link below Know your customer - Deep Dive Series 2: Recommendation & Regulation
Online Identity verification in the United States
When you open an account in the United States, you must comply with a number of regulations through an electronic know-your-customer (eKYC) process. eKYC is a way to electronically verify a customer's identity. Banks and financial institutions in the United States are particularly subject to two main laws: the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and the USA PATRIOT Act.
Collect customer information: Collect basic information such as the customer's name, date, address, and ID number.
Verify identity: Use the information collected to verify the customer's identity. You can use officially issued IDs, driver's licenses, passports, and more for this process.
Record keeping: Securely store the customer's identification documents and related information.
Compare: Compare customer information with government terrorist lists to ensure that there are no matches.
Method of collecting customer information
They rely on government-issued IDs to collect customer information. They scan the documents, determine if they've been stolen, and use facial recognition technology to verify that they're actually the person who owns the ID. If necessary, they also verify that the information provided by the customer matches information in a trusted database.
Severity of identity fraud
Identity theft is a serious problem in the United States, causing an estimated $9,000M USD in damages in 2022.
More sophisticated identity scams are on the rise, putting many people at financial risk. As a result, financial companies need to make every effort to ensure that they do not provide fraudulent financial services through more accurate eKYC / AML.
How ARGOS can help customer
ARGOS' vision is ID Infrastructure As A Service. Our vision is to provide all identity infrastructures for authentication from financial companies requiring eKYC to general users in a convenient way.
Supporting all authentication methods through a single URL and API is the core value that ARGOS delivers to its customers.
ARGOS currently provides a One-stop solution to support customers' eKYC. As a customer of ARGOS, you can use all the features with simple settings on the dashboard.
As mentioned earlier, the process of eKYC requires a variety of features that need to be prevented, from accurate recognition to the risk of fraud, and ARGOS provides all of them.
Identity recognition and data extraction
For ID Recognition, the start of the ARGOS eKYC service, supports recognition and data extraction for global IDs, not just US. We quickly follow policy changes in countries to support the scope of recognition.
Currently, the U.S. supports passports, state driver's licenses, military IDs, residency, VISA, vehicle registration, etc. by version depending on the design of the ID, as shown below.
ID Validation
ARGOS is a SaaS-based one-stop solution that provides 'ID validation' to prevent fraudulent submissions of non-original copies.
You can check and prevent copy identification with simple settings provided in the dashboard of ARGOS. (Setting → Multi-Verification & Anti Fraud)
Below is a photo of an attempted eKYC with a driver's license that was captured on a screen, rather than the actual original, and would have succeeded if only normal ID recognition and data extraction had been performed. (The image has been mosaicked to protect privacy).
In this case, there were two user rejection codes detected by ARGOS' system: Recaptured_document due to screen capture, and Image_forgery due to ID damage. (Check out ARGOS' full ID forgery and theft verification code)
Selfie - face comparison.
If you need 'facial recognition' for more secure authentication, you can easily access it from the ARGOS dashboard.
By applying the "Selfie-Face Comparison" feature in Settings → Multi-verification & Anti Fraud, you can compare the face on your ID with the current face captured by a live camera for a more secure verification. ARGOS' facial recognition performance is 99.996%, which is the highest level that can be achieved with a "single camera photo" without additional devices.
Selfie - Liveness
If you compare and verify users with facial recognition, you may experience the following face being authenticated.(Source: Liveness.com) As facial recognition technology improves, so does face spoofing, where fake and stolen users use it to try to authenticate others.
To prevent this, ARGOS already provides a liveness feature that distinguishes between "non-live" faces, such as faces captured on a screen or printed on paper.
You can use it by selecting 'Selfie - liveness' in Setting → Multi-Verification & Anti Fraud'.
Liveness provided by ARGOS is a passive liveness detected by a single photo, which is the most user-friendly method that does not require any action from the user.
eKYC solutions with ARGOS
In this article, you've seen how ARGOS can help you with eKYC. In addition to the eKYC features we've introduced, we also provide a variety of support for our customers.
Remember, ARGOS is all you need for all your eKYC needs, not just in the US, but globally!
ARGOS will continue to strive to make your authentication journey more convenient and secure. Join us in making your online world safer and more convenient!