Veriff and Comun: helping a US cross-border payments specialist aimed at Latin American immigrants

What business problem did Veriff solve for Comun?

Many recent immigrants are unable to supply the type of proof of identity and residency traditionally required to open a bank account in the US, such as a social security number or ID and a utility bill or lease. At the same time, the documents they may possess from their home country can be of many different types, from a driving license to a local election ID. The key problem for Comun was how to safely conduct the mandatory know-your-customer (KYC) due diligence checks required under financial sector regulations. 

Doing KYC manually would not have been sustainable from a resourcing standpoint, nor would it offer the required accuracy. 

Angélique Wynants, Comun’s Head of Operations explained: “What we needed was a digital KYC solution that could deal with the widest possible range of documentation across the largest possible number of countries worldwide. We then needed both to verify the document was genuine and confirm the customer presenting the document was its rightful owner.“

What made the difference to Comun when choosing Veriff?

At the point when Comun was initially looking for an identity verification partner, it was still an early-stage business with relatively modest resources from a software engineering perspective. The level of technical support a provider could offer was therefore a key issue. 

Thankfully, Veriff’s strong engineering team were able to partner closely with Comun’s inhouse team to ensure the solution could be integrated into operations quickly and smoothly.

While Comun has initially focused on serving Latin American immigrants in the US,, the firm’s long-term strategy is to ensure immigrants from all over the world can achieve upward mobility in the US. Veriff has probably the largest ID document resource in the market, including not just passports but also identity cards, driver’s licenses and residence permits. This offers the potential to open the door to customers in more than 230 countries and territories around the world. Given Comun’s business model and its global ambitions, this was a major factor in the firm’s decision to work with Veriff.

Finally, cost and scalability were also important factors. As well as offering good value from day one, Comun needed a solution that would be able to scale with the company without costs also rising exponentially.

What was the impact of implementing Veriff?

Hands-on support from Veriff’s technical team meant that the Comun engineers were able to fully integrate the bespoke solution provided within a couple of weeks, not just with their own systems but with other providers they were using in their tech stack.

Angélique Wynants explained that one of the things she likes to do before signing a contract with a third-party provider is to actually try to talk to their support team, to get a feel of whether the positive experience with the sales team will be repeated. She specifically calls out the high level of post-implementation support offered by Veriff.

“Veriff has a very, very strong customer support team that helps us with any issue we have on the platform, or even any general question that we have,” she said. “Whenever we think we have false positives or false negatives, they help us investigate.”

According to Angélique, once Veriff’s solution was implemented, Comun saw fraud decrease almost immediately, while time spent manually reviewing applications also dropped significantly. This more than cut in half the average time taken to approve a customer, even when manual review was involved – a vital saving given that a rapid response tends to be decisive in whether prospective customers go on to activate their account. 

Before working with Veriff, the most common fraud issue Comun encountered in its interactions with prospective customers was identity theft. Often, applicants were using another person’s social security number to try to open an account (while not compulsory to open an account, customers need a US social security number if they are presenting a US ID for identity verification). With Veriff’s systems in place, this type of fraud is no longer an issue for Comun.

From a customer experience perspective, Veriff’s solution has also made the process much more intuitive, while the ability to retry means that far fewer potential customers are dropping out during the onboarding process. 

The range of different documents Veriff’s solution can accept also means that Comun can access a far wider pool of potential customers. As Angélique says: “This means that using Veriff is not just a fraud prevention decision but a product decision.”

Finally, Comun is able to leverage the fraud expertise Veriff gains from working with customers across sectors throughout the globe.

“With Veriff we are learning from each other,” says Angélique. “Veriff works with so many different fintechs across so many different countries and so has seen some use cases we haven’t seen yet. They’re always on top of what’s going on in the fraud world and then educating us about what we may be seeing and how we can be better at preventing it.” 

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 verify online users rapidly and effortlessly 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. With more than 550 people from 60 different nationalities and offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, and Estonia, we are dedicated to helping businesses and individuals build a safer and more secure online world.