Belsimpel launches spin-off Verifai to battle identity fraud
After four years of dedicated development, we are proud to announce our official launch as an identity service provider! What started as a simple question at Belsimpel HQ in 2016 (how can we improve the way we verify our customers?) has turned into a full-fledged identity service provider: Verifai.
The reason we asked this question in the first place was that, at the time, the steps necessary to verify the identity of customers were time-consuming and outdated. By improving this process, it was our goal to improve customer satisfaction in a privacy-friendly manner. At the same time, Belsimpel wanted to combat identity fraud, which formed a serious problem in the telecommunications industry. However, this had to be done while only processing the sensitive personal information that absolutely needed to be processed. This requirement was inspired by legislation such as the GDPR, but also by the wish to protect the privacy of customers. It was with this goal that the founders of Belsimpel, Jeroen Doorenbos and Jeroen Elkhuizen, formed a new team to work on a project that eventually became Verifai.
Our search
We started our quest for a suitable identity verification solution in 2016. At first, we searched for existing companies that provided identity verification services. However, we quickly learned that no provider had all the qualities we were looking for. Building on our over 10 years of experience in a fraud sensitive market, we came up with four main requirements that were seemingly incompatible:
- A pleasant user experience: important because of our roots as a telecom retailer, a market in which conversion is key.
- Affordable pricing: prices were sometimes euros per successful scan.
- Data security: sensitive personal information was often sent to and processed on servers in countries with laxer security laws in place than we were comfortable with.
- Privacy for end-users: entire passports and IDs were sent and processed, which meant that more personal data was processed than necessary.
- Fast and secure authentication through NFC: virtually no one made use of NFC checks, even though NFC provides a quick and safe way to authenticate compatible documents.
No existing identity service provider could give us all we wanted. Rather than give up on our requirements, we decided to take matters into our own hands and forge our own solution.
The development and founding of Verifai
To develop a suitable solution, Jeroen Doorenbos and Jeroen Elkhuizen set an in-house development team to work. Given the history of the company, this was not an unusual step. Belsimpel has been developing almost all of its software in-house since it was founded in 2008 and therefore has a large team of developers.
When we started the project, we did not yet understand the extent to which our identity verification challenges corresponded to those faced by other organizations. It wasn’t until we shared our initial plans with partners almost by accident that we noticed how excited they were about the technology we were developing. To help other organizations with similar identity verification needs, we decided to incorporate our technology into a new company that would be called Verifai.
Current state and future
Now, after four years of hard work, we are ready to launch our identity verification solutions globally. Our software allows organizations to verify the digital identity of a real-world customer. With our solutions, identification documents from more than 130 countries are captured, automatically read at lightning speed and checked for authenticity. Biometric checks such as face matching can be used to ensure that an identity document belongs to the person who is performing the identity verification. Organizations of all sizes can deploy the technology as part of their Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) processes without compromising on speed, conversion, privacy, or security.
Nobody knows what the future holds, but we do know our goal and that is why we look to the future with optimism. As an identity service provider, it is our mission to make identity fraud a thing of the past.
Learn more about Verifai: https://www.verifai.com
