Fraud prevention, global compliance, and global identity verification data go hand-in-hand. But that debate has long been defined by this “either-or” mindset. EITHER you choose the best data to power your fraud prevention efforts (but you have to find all these specialized providers, do the hard work of integration, spend a bunch of money, etc.) OR you choose a single point of access that rolls a bunch of data together and gives you a single vendor to manage (but you get poorer data and it’s not updated very often).

“Either-or” has been the only option for a long time. But now there’s the option to have the best data from many different sources AND access it through one system. You can have your cake and eat it, too.

Fear is Slowing Your Growth

Fraud & money laundering are no small problems in e-commerce, iGaming, or FINTECH organizations. Cross-border trade represents all this growth potential. Countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Turkey and regions like Eastern Europe have this tremendous appetite for online buying (each fueled by an exploding middle-class with newfound disposable income).  Similarly, with the demands of COVID-19, more and more online gaming and gambling age verification is required to effective “police” bad actors.  Lastly, challenger banks and global FINTECH companies are disrupting the status quo in finance, money transfer, payments, and banking.  The real risks in all these efforts start with this very fundamental question…

Is this person who they say they are?   

There are a lot of tools out there to help companies figure out this question. The REGTECH space seems to launch bigger-better-faster fraud prevention, AML, and compliance startups every day. But it all must start with determining whether that customer on the other end of a computer (or, as is more often the case, tablet or smartphone) is a legitimate person or not.

Solving the problem of fraud & Compliance starts with identity verification.

The Best Sources for Identity Data are Local Providers

The best sources for identity data are local providers, experts in their own markets who know the nuances of their home countries better than anyone else, and who are committed to keeping data constantly up-to-date.

Take Mexico, for example, where the combination of paternal and maternal last names are used in the performance of an identity check. And where there are multiple identity numbers in use (RFC, IMSS, and CURP). The Global Data Consortium partners in Mexico supply 361 million unique records that provide identity verification (some combination of name, national identity number, address, date of birth, and more) for 110 million individuals.

It’s an enormous amount of identity data, maintained by businesses that use it for identity verification purposes within Mexico, and that invest in it by adding new data and continuously refreshing what they have.

Mexico is only one example to highlight these points: Local sources have more complete data to share, they update it more frequently and they bring to bear their local expertise to help you understand important nuances like the differences in RFC versus IMSS versus CURP.

The Problem with Accessing Local Data

The problem with accessing local data is that jurisdictional issues around privacy laws mean each country tends to put strict controls over who can do what with identity data. So the best sources are rarely global services where the data is shipped across borders and aggregated onto a big server. Most governments don’t like this data leaving their countries.

So what you want to do integrate with the in-country data of local providers via the cloud where an API call accesses the data on the local source’s servers. This gives end-users exposure to more data because governments and IP owners feel more comfortable when the data never leaves the country of origin.

Of course, this sort of cloud-based integration isn’t easy to do. For most businesses, there are simply too many complexities based on communicating in different languages, surmounting legal issues, development costs to build and maintain access to various systems, and all sorts of payment headaches.

And so the “either-or” mindset kicks in. Many of the companies decide instead to rely on aggregators of global identity data, services that bring together a lot of information but require their clients to sacrifice quality for convenience. They provide one point of access for a lot of data, but they fall far short of the standards set by in-country local sources.

Going Beyond the “Either-Or” Mindset

What if you could have both?

What if you could have the best available local identity data and get it through one point of access?

That’s what we’ve done with our Worldview system. It provides:
API Management. With one point of integration, Worldview gives you access to the world’s best local identity providers without development costs or headaches.
Legal + Compliance. GDC complies with the EU-US Safe Harbor Framework to protect personal data. We vet our data partners through rigorous legal and compliance checks so you don’t have to.

One Language. There are 6,500 spoken languages in the world. GDC talks with identity data partners in many of them. But you only need to know one to access their data through Worldview.

One Place to Pay. Vendor management is complex when dealing across languages, borders, and currencies. GDC simplifies that for you: one payment in one currency when using Worldview.

When you go global, going local can help you reduce fraud and improve your view on who your real customers are. Get a local view of your global transactions. Try Worldview.
Is this important to your business? If so, sign up for a Proof of Concept today.