Veriff and JTI Philippines: preventing youth access to products and improving customer conversion by more than 200%

About JTI

JTI is a global tobacco company focused on innovation and sustainability. 

The company was born in 2000 and today has 5,500 employees across 41 locations, including 38 sales branches, in the Philippines.

Their portfolio includes international cigarette brands such as Winston, Camel and Mevius, as well as local brands Mighty and Marvels. JTI has also introduced Nordic Spirit brand of nicotine pouches to the market.

As of January 2024, the company has a 43.6% share of the cigarette market in the Philippines. 

What business problems did Veriff solve for JTI?

JTI operates within a highly regulated industry and preventing youth access to products is one of its core principles. Ensuring that products are only sold to adult smokers aged 18 and above is therefore something the company takes very seriously.

Like most global retail businesses, digital is a key touchpoint when it comes to engaging with consumers so it is critical that JTI has proper and efficient systems in place to help verify consumers’ age before they are allowed into their digital ecosystem.

However, JTI’s former verification partner was undertaking laborious manual reviews of consumer IDs. And, as JTI Philippines was growing and strengthening its presence online via brand websites, these processes were proving to be less and less efficient.

What made the difference to JTI when choosing Veriff?

There were two main reasons why JTI Philippines opted to partner with Veriff. 

First and foremost, the business noted that Veriff has vast experience with other regulated industries, such as banking. This experience in working in sectors that possess an extremely high compliance threshold gave JTI the utmost confidence in Veriff’s offerings and services. 

Secondly, JTI was attracted by Veriff’s competitive pricing, which, unlike some competitors on the market, does not feature recurring administrative fees on top of billable costs. 

What was the immediate impact of implementing Veriff?

JTI Philippines was already on its digital evolution journey before it was accelerated by the pandemic. During the prolonged lockdown, all on-ground marketing activities were brought to a halt. The team had to therefore pivot and move offline activities online. This meant that the company had to ensure that the attendees of online events it hosted were aged 18 and above.
Even JTI’s raffle programs faced setbacks during the lockdown. Due to mobility restrictions, raffle winners were unable to be physically present for identity verification before claiming their prize.
All of this meant that there was a clear need for an innovative solution to digitally verify individuals so that JTI could continue programs for its customers and consumers.

For online events, JTI started using Veriff’s biometric solutions to verify event attendees before they were let into the stream – the selfie that was captured had to match the one that was already registered to the account.
For raffle prize claiming, JTI used IDV to let winners claim their own prizes without needing to be physically present. Doing this reduced turnaround time from 48 hours to just minutes.

With Veriff’s support, JTI was also able to scale the verification of website registrations. Today, as a result, JTI has 37,000 verified users across all their websites, compared to 11,000 prior to partnering with Veriff. 

Veriff also helped to identify fraud attempts, flag suspicious behavior, improve conversions by 223% and improve both quality of sessions and medium response time. 

About Veriff

Veriff is the preferred identity verification partner for the world’s biggest and best digital companies, including pioneers in fintech, crypto, gaming, and the mobility sectors. We provide advanced technology, deep insights, and expertise from our foundation in digital-first Estonia and honed in leading the digital identity revolution. The partner of choice for businesses who need to rapidly and effortlessly verify online users from anywhere in the world, Veriff delivers the widest possible identity document coverage.

By supporting government-issued IDs from more than 230 issuing countries and territories and with our intelligent decision engine, which analyzes thousands of technological and behavioral variables, Veriff enables trust from the first hello.