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All about AI based Facematch & Liveliness Detection

As technology seems to be taking over the world, businesses rely heavily on Artificial Intelligence (AI), for almost every aspect of work. AI has seeped not only into your personal life, but also your professional life – from handling everyday tasks, aiding critical problem solving, onboarding customers seamlessly, and improving the overall customer experience.

With Kwik.ID’s Video KYC verification, onboarding customers is certainly made easy, but what makes it trustworthy are the Facematch and Liveliness tools that detect frauds, and prevent impersonation or identity theft of any sort. With the recent advances in AI and deep learning technology, face recognition accuracy has significantly increased.

Facematch and Liveliness are probably the most essential security features which ensure that the user is authentic and there is no foul play involved. High-speed and extremely accurate face recognition technology is based on convolutional neural networks of the latest architecture and most progressive methods of training. The algorithm is based on the neural network and a machine learning approach, unlike “traditional” algorithms based on mathematical model. While active 3D techniques detect movements like eye-blinking and facial movements, passive 3D uses internal algorithms to detect frauds, together making spoofing difficult for the user.

Facematch and Liveliness tools have been pathbreaking innovations in recent times, that facilitate easy and hassle-free business no matter where you or your customers are.

It is no surprise then that so many industries and sectors choose a Video KYC process over a traditional KYC, to ensure that their onboarding process is 100% secure and smooth.

Apart from just adopting Video KYC, here are some industries/sectors that have begun transforming with these tools:

  • Banking: For the banking sector, customer security and fraud prevention is of utmost importance. Facial recognition allows users to log in securely from the mobile banking apps.
  • Finance and Fintech: Financial institutions opt for facial recognition and liveliness tools for instant loans or users making regular payments.
  • Hospitality: Facial recognition is a preferred choice for verifying and authorising guests, especially at check-in.
  • Marketing: The Facematch algorithm helps you analyse your customers’ gender and age and allows you to evaluate your marketing strategy.
  • Trading platforms and exchanges: Facematch and liveness tools can be integrated into the platforms for distant account registration and verification of the account owner.

Other similar fields that choose Kwik.ID’s video KYC for its automated AI tools include insurance companies, brokerages, e-wallets, and NBFCs too.

At Kwik.ID, your data security and privacy have always been our top priority, therefore adopting these AI-powered tools for our instant Video KYC process was a pre-requisite.

The biggest benefit to you is making sure you aren’t being spoofed by a potential customer. But there are so many more benefits too:

  • Aids organisations in speedy KYC / authentication process
  • Authentication methods are efficient and highly accurate
  • Saves time and resources
  • Convenient and cost-effective
  • Determines real user presence during any type of financial transactions
  • Prevents duplicate ids and multiple account registrations for the same user

All of these features make Kwik.ID’s Video KYC a promising tool, which when integrated with your business platform, seamlessly differentiates between actual customers and fake ones. Also with Kwik.ID you will be able to enjoy Video KYC at low bandwith.

So far, after conducting over 50,000+ sessions, and achieving a success rate of over 85% on Video KYC sessions, our biggest learning has been that AI-powered tools have been a major success factor to build trust among KwikID’s clientele, helping us help you.


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How to Achieve a Video KYC Completion Rate of Over 85%?

The world’s going digital with Video KYC verification to onboard customers instantly, and so are you, because you want what’s best for your business. But just as you’re closing the deal with a potential customer you lose connectivity and, in the bargain, lose your customer, too. That’s something you don’t have to worry about if you opt for Kwik.ID as your Video KYC solution providers.

Low bandwidth is just one of the many reasons why your business may not achieve its desired VKYC completion rate. Other factors include:

  • Customers being ill-prepared with insufficient documents before the Video KYC session.
  • Low lighting, which prevents the potential customer from being clearly detected by our Face Recognition Tool.
  • Customers not being tech-savvy enough.

There’s more to the list, but with Kwik.ID’s Video KYC solution one can be sure these hiccups don’t persist, and you achieve a completion rate of over 85% while onboarding customers in just 3 minutes. Every obstacle that lowers your completion rate is eliminated with our tools. 

  • Pre-session Guidance: Our tutorials make it easy for your customers to grasp the process better and stay prepared, well in advance, with the necessary official verification documents.
  • Low Bandwidth Support: One of the primary reasons for a poor Video KYC completion rate is low bandwidth, but with Kwik.ID you will enjoy all the benefits of Video KYC at low bandwith. In case the agent or the customer is located in an erratic network area, this feature will keep the session moving. Our minimum bandwidth requirement is also as low as 176 kbps. 
  • HD Quality: Our Facematch and Liveliness Tools are designed to adjust to low bandwidth, so no matter how poor the internet connection is, the data detected and captured is always HD quality.
  • Lighting Alert: Poor lighting is another major concern that leads to a drop in the completion rate. Before the session begins, our Light Detection tool studies the lighting around you and the customer and notifies you to move to a well-lit area so that the session can be swift and smooth. 
  • Inclusive Platform: At Kwik.ID, we push the envelope and endeavour to create an inclusive platform. To eliminate any language barrier and/or technical issues our Video KYC platform provides visual cues and assertive measures to guide with the process, so as to make it quick and intuitive. Our textual chat option also eliminates any linguistic issues that the agent or customer might face.
  • Tech Support: Customers who aren’t tech-savvy might shy away midway through a session, leading to a drop in the completion rate. To overcome this, our assisted Video KYC allows the customer to screen-share with the agent, requesting guidance for complex processes like Aadhaar XML Generation. 
  • Third-Party Elimination: Kwik.ID Video KYC’s straightforward interface connects the potential customer to an assigned agent with a quick click of a link, unlike many others that necessitate the need for an external app to carry out the session. You don’t need an app at all to do the Video KYC using Kwik.ID.

Apart from ensuring that your business can #KeepMoving with a high completion rate of VKYC sessions, some of our other advantages are:

  • Being 100% RBI Compliant.
  • Easy to integrate.
  • 100% Data Privacy.
  • Fraud Prevention.
  • Supports Chrome, Safari, Android, iOS.

So far our customers have achieved a completion rate of over 85% on Kwik.ID’s Video KYC sessions and apart from all the above elements that aid this success, our AI predictive technology is yet another factor that plays an important role in predicting a Video KYC completion. Using data like the customer’s location, psychographic, mobile carrier network, and more, the software predicts whether a VKYC session is going to be completed successfully or not. 

At Kwik.ID our business is to get your business moving. With an array of features and advantages, Kwik.ID promises to ease out your VKYC sessions, so you can onboard customer in just 3 minutes and conduct business, stress-free. 

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Our Learnings from Completing 50,000 Video KYC Sessions

When we started Kwik.ID, it was with the simple idea of offering a ‘Kwik’ solution to organizations across every financial sector, who want to expedite their KYC processes and onboard customers almost instantly. Today, we have to our credit over 50,000 video KYC sessions and a loyal clientele who encourage us to push the envelope.

Having worked with almost every finance-based segment out there, including Banks, NBFCs, Insurance organizations, FinTechs, and even Gaming and Forex, among others, our journey along with 50,000+ Video KYC verification sessions has taught us plenty.

On average we conduct 1500 sessions a day and can handle 15 parallel sessions at any given point of time. All these sessions across markets gave us an insight into how each customer is unique in terms of requirement. How then does a single product benefit them all?

We learnt that one of the key factors that organizations feared with online KYC, was frauds and identity theft. Our immediate response was to include a Fraud Check that verifies customer identity with AI-powered Facematch. Our Liveliness engine protects against fraudsters by ensuring they are physically present and do not use digital photos/printed photos at any time during the process. Features like central database verification of OVDs, fuzzy text matching between details on all OVDs, and document tampering risk score are some of the additional measures that we incorporated to protect organizations’ interest.

Another problem we witnessed were the rejections due to lack of awareness among customers and the drop-offs owing to internet connectivity. While the former has seen immense growth, with more organizations moving towards a quicker video KYC approach for their business, the latter was a matter of concern because we didn’t want to disappoint keen customers. We configured our solution to work on low bandwidth mode and support lower android versions too, (currently supporting 4.4+ which is compatible with 97% of handsets in India), to ensure that customers and agents (authorized personnel from an organization) both enjoy a seamless journey, no matter where they access our Kwik.ID solution from.

Apart from all of this, we aspire to cater to our clientele with an easy 4-step process and scheduling of calls for a suitable time, so customers can attend the video KYC session as per their convenience and your business can #KeepMoving too. Win-win for all!

One of the greatest learnings came in January 2020, when we went live with one of the largest FinTech organizations in India with our 100% API driven solution which supports IOS, Android and Web. It has reduced the organization’s KYC timeframe drastically with a session lasting an average of 1.5 minutes, instead of the traditional week-long KYC process. Tests were carried out across tier 1, 2, and 3 cities, and we found that there have been zero bugs since we went live. 

Other features like providing software updates for free, eliminating the need for additional applications, being 100% RBI Complaint, and providing daily, weekly and monthly statistics for monitoring growth, are add-ons that other organizations enjoy and trust us with. All of these add up to our excellence in Video based KYC identification.

As they say, success is a 2-way street. While organizations rely on us, we rely on them to help us better our product. So that we can design a finely-honed solution that effectively delivers on all the stringent KYC norms, and promises you the ease of doing business, wherever, whenever.

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Optical Character Recognition: Revolutionizing the Know-Your-Customer Process

Traditional KYC procedures are infamously labour-intensive. They generally involve making a trip to a branch office and manually filling out forms that are time-consuming, costly, and limited to office hours.

Customers today expect instant gratification and will accept nothing less than real-time digital services round the clock. With digital competitors lurking around every corner to entice dissatisfied customers, it is imperative that companies don’t appear to be creating unnecessary hurdles whilst adhering to regulatory guidelines. This, coupled with the physical challenges of conducting business-as-usual during a global lockdown, creates more room for innovation than we’ve ever witnessed before.

Innovation in Isolation

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a technology that recognizes text within a digital image and is used to convert virtually any kind of images containing text into machine-readable data. Prior to OCR technology, the only way to digitize printed paper documents was to re-type the text manually. This was not only time consuming but also increased the possibilities of human error.

While OCR is commonly used to recognize text in scanned documents, its technology is also used in data entry automation, indexing documents for search engines, automatic number plate recognition, as well as assisting the blind and visually impaired. It has been exceedingly useful in transforming historic newspapers and texts into searchable formats by digitizing them.

Optimizations through Machine Learning

A few common problems encountered by OCR over the years, such as blurs, glares, incorrect image capture are now being tackled by the use of Machine Learning. Obviously, conversion accuracy is important, and most OCR software delivers 98% to 99% accuracy.[1]

OCR solution by Kwik.ID:

The OCR solution offered by Kwik ID enables instant verification of OVD’s like Aadhaar, PAN, VoterID, Passport, and Driver’s License. It makes it easier to detect frauds through signature matching tools and leverages ML to spot problematic information. Furthermore, Kwik.ID also promises its customers of Video KYC at low bandwith with its collection of the Best Video KYC tools.

We have built a state of the art OCR engine that extracts meaningful information from the image of an identity card using the following module

  • Rotation and cropping of Image
  • Raw text detection from natural image
  • Extraction of meaningful data from Raw text
  1. Rotation and cropping of Image

For the text detection module to work properly, it’s essential to remove the background noise and make the ID card image horizontal with 0 degrees. However, since the image of the ID card is provided by an end-user, it may contain a lot of background noise & can be at any angle. This module helps in the perfect alignment of the image & removal of the background noises.

Raw image
Output after processing

2. Raw text detection from natural image

Once the card image is cropped and rotated, it is provided to the ML engine that detects text in the image. These detected texts are then extracted from the image along with their corresponding coordinates.

3. Extraction of meaningful data

In the final step, we extract meaningful information from the detected text in step two. However, just detecting raw text is not enough. We need to identify which text represents which information. For example, if two names are detected in an image, which one is the father’s name, and which one is the card holder’s name should be segregated. 

Here the coordinates extracted with each text play the role. Based on different types of cards, the extraction engine contains different templates for each type of ID card to identify the position of details.

While not a new technology, OCR has been fine-tuned via AI & ML making it an indispensable tool for quicker customer onboarding and thereby ensuring smoother Video KYC verification.

To know more about Kwik.ID’s seamless e-KYC solution, please write to info@getkwikid.com.


[1] https://tdwi.org/articles/2018/03/05/diq-all-how-accurate-is-your-data.aspx

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Is Video KYC a Leap Forward for the Financial Ecosystem?

The Scenario

Banks need secure, fast, simpler and scalable solutions (compliant with RBI guidelines) for customer on-boarding, to ensure they neither lose interest from potential customers nor increase the inherent identity risk in their portfolio. For the financial sector, until a 2018 ban by the Supreme Court on use of Aadhaar-based KYC by Regulated Entities, Digital KYC was an efficient means of streamlining their onboarding process. Paperless, cost-efficient, and highly productive – the benefits were significant. RBI later amended its master direction on KYC norms in 2019, allowing regulated entities to open new accounts using Aadhar verification, with consent from the Aadhaar card holder.

More recently, in January 2020, India became the first country to allow Video based KYC identification of customers of Regulated Entities (REs). If done right, Video KYC verification can make the entire process of account opening and enrollment seamless, faster, simpler and more secure, without compromising on the quality of customer information. All of these are key (and possibly the only) ingredients to success in challenging times like we face today. If one ever had a doubt about conducting KYC remotely, #COVID19 has reminded us that digital is as powerful as physical – from office meetings to operational processes.

The Challenges Today

To continue to move forward with our businesses, while maintaining social distance today, Video KYC is the perfect answer to day-to-day operational challenges faced by most banks, NBFCs, Telecom companies and more. It enables digital customer identification process through algorithmically designed and managed video sessions. There are no more physical documents or scheduled visits – there is sufficient masking of data so that your agents don’t have to wear masks.

The Solution

Kwik.ID by Think Analytics is a lightweight plug-and-play Digital and Video KYC solution is 100% compliant and allows REs to conduct Video-based Customer Identification process. From on-boarding to ongoing authentication, Kwik.ID can digitize your customer identification and verification processes. Kwik.ID is packed with cutting edge artificial intelligence, computer vision, big data analytics, and smart workflow design features

Functional and Operational Benefits:
  • Seamless: Works across multiple OVDs.
  • Live Photos: It enables banks to take a live customer photo along with proof of possession of OVDs as evidence of identity and address to complete the KYC process
  • Geo-tags: Live geo-tagging of customers’ location
  • Face Match: Match images across different OVDs, Selfie, etc
  • Audit Records: Record for concurrent audit by RE
  • Efficient: Reduces substantial amount of time and expenditure for banks by eliminating paperwork
  • Effective: Complete customer onboarding in 2-3 minutes
Technical Benefits:
  • Customer Experience: Instant customer onboarding using Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Error Reduction: Reduces the risk of human errors by using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) functionality
  • Secure: Eliminates the chances of frauds and forgery of documents
  • Multi-platform: Accessible on any kind of device – laptop, smartphone or tablet
  • Secure Records: All the interactions during Video KYC are recorded and stored for future reference
  • Smart Scheduling: Workflow load balancer for agent productivity management

Additionally, you can get real-time verification and authentication of Officially Valid Document (OVD) like Aadhaar, PAN, Voter ID, Driver’s License, etc. with a registered database. Meanwhile, our Optical Character Recognition (OCR) further speeds up the customer on-boarding process by digitizing the OVDs.

And come to think of it, we are just getting started. Video KYC can pave the way for a whole new era of video-driven customer engagement. #SocialDistancing or not!

To know more about how to get started with Digital/Video KYC using Kwik.ID, please write to info@getkwikid.com

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The RBI Video KYC Circular

On 9th January 2020, RBI released the much awaited circular comprising guidelines around performing Video KYC aka. Video Customer Identification Process (V-CIP).

Prior to this circular, it was mandatory for institutions regulated by the RBI (such institutions are referred to as REs or Registered Entities) to conduct an IPV (in-person verification) of their customers prior to account opening. This makes KYC (and in-effect account opening) a time, manpower and cost intensive process.

Video KYC is a much awaited relief and a boon for the financial sector as the RE’s can now do the in-person verification process/customer KYC over a video call. Besides, nowadays, Video KYC verification is also available for all with the latest and the best Video KYC tools.

This alternative customer verification process enables and promotes efficiency in time and cost investments and manpower management while improving security, auditability, and demographic penetration. Moreover, RE’s have also been advised (allowed) the usage of AI based solutions like face matching, OCR, liveliness check, etc to further speed up the process and reduce fraud.

Below are the key features from the RBI’s Video KYC (V-CIP) circular:
  • The Video KYC process is to be divided into two parts –
    • The Video KYC Session
    • The Concurrent Audit
  • Video KYC must be performed only by an RE authorized employee over a two way video + audio call with the customer.
  • The process must take place on RE’s domain only – WhatsApp, Google Hangouts/Duo, Skype and other similar soultions cannot be used for this purpose
  • A geo-location check must be enabled to ensure that the customer is in India whilst in the Video KYC session.
  • For the purpose of POI OSV – the RE personnel must capture a live picture of the customer’s PAN card during the process (except in cases where e-PAN is provided by the customer) – the same has to be checked against NSDL database.
  • Additionally, an OVD amongst the following can be used for POA:
    • Aadhaar
    • Driving License
    • Voter ID
    • Passport
  • The RBI circular provides that while Aadhaar is not a mandatory document,
    • Banks can make use of Aadhar e-KYC service made available by UIDAI directly.
    • Other RE’s wishing to use Aadhaar as an OVD can opt for
      1. e-Aadhaar
      2. Offline Aadhaar XML
      3. SecureQR code based Aadhaar verification.
    • The latter two must not be more than 3 days stale from the date of carrying out the Video KYC session.
    • Moreover, proof of possession of the Aadhaar number is considered satisfactory – so additionally, in case the customer has a physical copy of the Aadhaar card with them, a live picture of the same akin to the PAN process must be captured during the Video KYC session.
  • If Aadhaar is treated as an OVD, Aadhaar images must be stored with the first 8 digits of the Aadhaar number redacted/masked away; same goes for the aadhaa
  • During the process, the RE must also capture a live photo of the customer and ensure that the photo on the OVD matches the live customer.
  • A set of random questions have to be presented to the customer to ascertain liveliness and protect against fraud and collusion. These questions can be unique per customer and can be picked up from the details they filled in the application form. Alternatively, they can be completely random as well.
  • The complete process must take place over a secure communications channel, be real-time and seamless.
  • The session must be recorded, time and geo-stamped and kept in a secure location; available for retrieval as proof and for audit.
  • Once the Video KYC process (stage 1) is complete, a Concurrent Audit must mandatorily be performed to further cross-validate customer details and to ensure sanctity of the Video KYC process to rule out any collusion/fraud possibilities. The Concurrent Audit includes a complete check of the Video KYC session recording along with customer details.
  • To ensure that no fraud/collusion takes place, the Concurrent Audit and Video KYC session should be performed by two separate authorized employees of the RE.
  • Only when the Concurrent Audit marks all documents as clear can the customer’s account be opened.

The RBI Video KYC Circular URL – https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=11783

Kwik.ID Video KYC is a fully RBI compliant Video KYC / V-CIP solution that additionally features Facematch, OCR, Aadhaar XML, e-Aadhaar, PAN, DL, Voter ID verification, Liveliness detection and a concurrent audit portal; it also comes packaged with scheduling, routing, link-based initiation, suport for low-bandwidth connections, customizability, compatibility with mobile apps as well as websites and a lot more features.

With over 1500 sessions daily and over 50K sessions in total, Kwik.ID Video KYC is testing waters and evolving continuously.

So… what are you waiting for?

Visit getkwikid.com/video-kyc.html for more deatils.

Key in your details in our contact form and we will reach out to you at the earliest to get you rolling – getkwikid.com/video-kyc.html#contact-us

Mat Darona, Kwik.ID Karona!


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How Banks Can Acquire Customers Within 3 – Minutes Amid Covid Lockdowns

With challenges comes change and banks have stood witness to a massive behavioural change over the past few weeks of global turmoil. As the internet took centre seat in every household across India, even the most reluctant of customers was forced to navigate their way through internet banking. This accompanied by the re-activation of dormant customers, all looking to make non-cash related payments through IMPS/NEFT/UPI etc., purchase goods or services or transfer funds, saw internet banking KPIs sail well past their yearly targets.

Opportunity for Banks

With the current market scenario spooking even the most seasoned investor, we are likely to follow a trend of withdrawals from the equity market and deposits into safer term deposits for the foreseeable future. With saving bank interest rates also falling, even the slightest variation in a bank’s offering can lend them a competitive edge in acquiring new customers. Even though bank liquidity would seem higher for the present quarter, eventually when the manufacturing and consumer goods markets come into action, bank’s assets would be re-directed into these segments. This gives banks a huge opportunity to expand their existing customer base and onboard new customers at the present time.

But how can banks seize this opportunity and reach out and onboard new customers in a time where our world has shifted from outdoors to online?

The Silver Lining

In its circular dated 9th January 2020, Reserve Bank of India enabled the onboarding of customers remotely through digital channels, using a Video-based Customer identification Process (V-CIP). A savvy bank can now stitch together a customer’s experience that seamlessly conducts the following.

  1. Video-based Know Your Customer (V-KYC) for customer onboarding
  2. Open savings and fixed deposit accounts
  3. Transfer money into these accounts

These legs of the user’s journey with a new bank, which earlier took hours, possibly days and multiple trips to the bank, can now be completed within 3 minutes. Yes, this is possible with the best Video KYC tools that you can avail from the premium Video KYC solution providers.

#KeepMoving with Kwik.ID

Think Analytics was quick on the uptake and released a coherently designed Video-KYC solution, Kwik.ID to enable banks to enter the digital era of customer onboarding.

The 3-Minute journey captures the following steps essential for a user to complete KYC.

  1. Take a selfie
  2. Provide proof of possession of Officially Valid Document (OVDs)
  3. Answer a few random questions to ensure liveliness

With over 50,000 KYC sessions successfully completed, endless learnings extracted and incorporated, Kwik.ID is a succinct tool which can be used for 3-minute customer onboarding, optimizing agent bandwidth and managing customer experience.

To know more about how Kwik.ID can help your customer onboarding please write to info@getkwikid.com