Tag: socialdistancing

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Exploring Aadhar XML verification journey with Kwik.ID

There clearly exists a need to move closer to a completely online customer onboarding process, as we’ve established earlier. However, as we move deeper into a digital age, data protection and privacy become central issues for any institution to take into account.

Kwik.ID is one such smart solution for customer onboarding and Digital KYC, which has an inbuilt option for Aadhar verification while limiting the sharing of users’ personal data. It allows users to voluntarily use it and complete the onboarding procedure without disclosing information such as Aadhaar number or sharing their biometrics with the REs.

How does it work?

The Aadhaar offline verification route is a fairly simple process which requires an individual to ping the UIDAI website download the XML and share the XML ZIP file along with the Share Code to the financial institution. The information generated will include the name, address, photo, gender, date of birth, registered phone number (as a comparable hash for protecting the user’s privacy), and registered e-mail address (as a comparable hash for protecting the user’s privacy). This information is obtained from UIDAI through the approved Aadhaar Offline Paperless XML process.

All the information obtained through the Offline Paperless XML process is stamped with UIDAI’s digital signature computed uniquely for each person, we check this digital signature every time upon decrypting the ZIP file to ensure that it wasn’t tampered with.

To avail this feature, it is imperative that the customers’ mobile number be linked to their Aadhar card. With that in place all a customer needs to do is to perform the following 3 steps to generate the XML:

  • Key in the Aadhaar number
  • Enter the captcha code and share code
  • Enter OTP received on registered mobile

The Aadhar XML route is a secure and user-friendly way for instantaneous online KYC verification. It will not only enable seamless onboarding of customers but also eliminates data breaches by limiting the data that needs to be shared.

The Kwik.ID Aadhaar Verification module powered by the approved Offline Paperless XML process is available as an independent module ready to be integrated in your digital journeys. Furthermore, it is also available pre-embedded in our Video KYC offering, wherein the XML generation, retrieval and verification process takes place live in the active Video KYC session entirely on the customer’s device ensuring the same compliance and security standards. In addition, it is important to note that we use best Video KYC tools to ease your KYC verification.

To know more about Kwik.ID’s Aadhaar Verification module, please write to info@getkwikid.com.

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Alcohol e-commerce seems simple. But is it?

Why ID Verification is Key for Alcohol E-Sellers

The Indian government’s decision to permit the sale of liquor has come as a sweet relief to alcohol aficionados across the country, especially considering we are merely emerging from the shutting down of all liquor establishments which had led to an extra dry summer.

The liquor industry is hit hard this year; every year, March to June is the peak season for liquor sales, generating 40% of the year’s revenue [1] for the retailer, as well as the State. State excise duties on liquor is the second or third largest contributor of approximately 10-15% to the State’s Own Tax revenue[1]. As soon as the central government allowed the sale of liquor during the lockdown, the long queues outside each store, the stories of “very large” transactions, and a subsequent flouting of all social distancing norms bore testimony to the customer demand for liquor (as an essential item), along with the inherent risks associated with liquor sales. States were quick to roll back the permissions, while they figure out alternate mechanisms. Allowing home delivery of liquor – whether through online sales or through direct sale by liquor shops has emerged as a viable idea. Chhattisgarh and Punjab have already gone ahead and allowed specific partners to enable liquor sale online[2].

Selling liquor online is the perfect solution to ensure social distancing and other precautionary measures. This could help maintain social distancing norms while generating additional business for retail outlets. [2]

From where we see it – there are three huge risks of allowing liquor sales in the current scenario (especially online):

  • Social distancing – home delivery allows us to manage social distancing.
  • Health practices – Most restaurants and open businesses are actively talking about the norms they follow for best health practices – infrared thermometers, cleanliness, use of sanitizers, etc. Liquor businesses are not known to follow these.
  • Identity risk – Alcohol cannot be sold to under-age customers. And neither can (or should) it be sold above certain volumes.

With KwikID, at least the identity assessment and risk can be managed. Right from age-restriction checks, geo-fencing, address verification, VCIP Digital KYC solutions – KwikID has been designed for Regulated Entities, and has adapted itself to similar and simpler customer onboarding.

Using inbuilt functionalities like OCR, face match & real-time verification/authentication of government-issued documents, Kwik.ID enables the customer verification journey to be completed within a minute.

The age verification can be completed with just 2 simple steps:

  • Take a selfie
  • Provide valid government-issued ID proof like Aadhar, PAN, Driver’s license, Voter ID or Passport

Enabling alcohol sales through technology is a great idea. It helps keep these liquor shops viable, their staff employed, people happy, and state funds flowing. For delivery apps, liquor as a category increases the average order value and generates higher customer retention. Using smart Digital KYC partners like Kwik.ID can curtail the risk of delivery to underage customers, ease the verification process for retailers, reduce the task of delivery agents at the doorstep of the customer & enhance customer experience thereby creating a win-win situation for retailers, delivery apps and customers.

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

[1] https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-why-states-are-so-keen-about-excise-duty-on-liquor-6393643/

[2]https://www.deccanherald.com/business/coronavirus-lockdown-30-liquor-industry-demands-govt-to-allow-online-sale-home-delivery-of-booze-833485.html

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BFSI Customeronboarding Digital transformation DigitalKYC Digitalonboarding Fintech KwikID KYC OCR Social Distancing V-CIP Video KYC VideoKYC

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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Embracing a Digital Future

With social distancing being the need of the hour, businesses have to find ways to ensure their continuity. This largely revolves around companies making their products and services available online.

The COVID-19-induced lockdown and consequent social distancing norms have especially opened up new avenues for companies offering digital customer verification. Most sectors have witnessed a boom in demand for digital KYC, including online education, matrimonial companies, gaming, crypto exchanges, and more[1].

The Finance Ministry, in turn, has permitted 29 insurance companies and 9 stock/securities entities to undertake Aadhaar authentication services[2]. This will be particularly beneficial for small and retail investors vis-à-vis the current lockdown situation, as they don’t need to provide physical documents as proof for KYC.

Further, the IAMAI has indicated that the time is right to replace lengthy in-person verification processes with comprehensive remote e-KYC innovations. This will help the financial services and payments industry to tide over the temporary setback caused due to the infeasibility of carrying out physical KYC for a long time to come.

The lockdown is now also forcing the loan and card issuance industry to prioritize digital lending. Granting of unsecured loans and issuance of credit cards while sitting at home could and very likely become the new normal, and all with zero paperwork. Think of the possibilities wherein through VCIP Digital KYC solutions an official could validate the customer’s documents instantly over video!

The current KYC process doesn’t incorporate social distancing as it still requires an in-person verification for OSV (Originally Seen & Verified) of OVDs (Officially Valid Documents). This crucial step in the KYC process can seamlessly be eliminated by leveraging new technology solutions, like Video KYC, to enable digital onboarding of customers.

Video KYC verification also enables risk management solutions like tracking and cybersecurity and containment of financial fraud. The AI and data analytic tools embedded in these solutions can streamline the lending process, thereby resulting in better underwriting and further reductions of costs in lending and collections.

 It’s time for us to take a leap ahead.

The Future is Now!

Learn more on how to seamlessly conduct KYC using Kwik.ID’s Digital & Video KYC solution at https://getkwikid.com/ or write to us at info@getkwikid.com.

[1] https://ibsintelligence.com/ibs-journal/ibs-news/video-kyc-covid19-forcing-digitization-banks-online-education/

[2] https://www.deccanherald.com/business/29-insurance-cos-9-securities-related-entities-can-collect-aadhaar-for-kyc-829910.html

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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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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

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How to Keep Moving in a Socially Distanced World

With an ever-changing world bringing to us an ever-mounting set of challenges, it often feels hard to keep up and keep evolving at the same pace. However, when we dig deeper, we realize that our development never really slowed down; it just required a pinch of innovation added to help us adapt to a new world order.

Challenging times (à la Covid-19) often serve as this much-needed impetus to get our innovative juices flowing. Over the last couple of weeks, we have noticed that the pandemic (as declared by the World Health Organization) we are facing as a civilization has in fact, opened a plethora of alternatives, especially for businesses.

The role of technology as a bridge between client and customer often goes unnoticed in our daily lives. But when daily life comes to a standstill, technology finally comes into its own. The Government of India is urging people to move towards digital banking services, despite India being a heavily cash-based society. Moreover, a lot of Banks, NBFCs and Fintech companies have come up with new emergency credit line schemes to help individuals and businesses affected due to COVID-19, meet their liquidity.

Reacting swiftly to current events, we at Think Analytics, in a very short span of time, have put in place the right infrastructure, technology and access to ready our employees as well as our clients for remote working and ace this period of social distancing.

For one, our Digital KYC product, Kwik.ID, provides an opportunity for banks and other financial lending institutions to continue their operations remotely, by using consent-based Video Customer Identification Process (V-CIP) for the customers’ on-boarding and verification. Amongst other capabilities, key features of our Digital KYC product, Kwik.ID, include:

  • Fully compliant with Amendments to Master Direction – Know Your Customer (KYC) Direction, 2020
  • Provides OVD verification, live photo capturing & geo-tagging of customers
  • With the use of liveliness detector, fuzzy match of identification details on OVDs, etc. it helps prevent fraudulent practices
  • Supports end to end encryption of customer data

We, at Think Analytics, are committed to providing viable and easily implementable VCIP Digital KYC solutions. Even as we unleash the power of data and build platform solutions, our goal remains to solve for an organization’s need of the hour.

Learn more and get down to business at https://getkwikid.com