Blockpass offers an increasingly essential service to businesses that are involved in regulated industries; KYC-as-a-Service. As a vital identity verification application, Blockpass works with those that participate in industries like virtual banks, gaming, crypto, blockchain, and other financial institutions.
At Top10 Website Hosting we were intrigued to find out more about what they have to offer. Dr. Hans Lombardo, CMO of the company, was kind enough to provide us with answers to our questions.
The Reasons Blockpass Exists
Identity verification has never been as crucial as it is today. There are countless risks involved with online financial transactions, regardless of the specific industry you’re in. Businesses need to know exactly who’s who when it comes to dealing with finances. Thus, being able to easily verify the identities of customers and associates, significantly reduces the risk of fraud and theft.
Hans told us; “As a project, Blockpass was launched in early 2017 as a joint venture between blockchain venture studio Chain of Things (CoT –http://www.chainofthings.com) and Infinity Blockchain Labs (https://www.blockchainlabs.asia/).” Hans is also a co-founder of Chain of Things.
He continued; “Since early 2016, Chain of Things had been engaged in research on using blockchain as a digital identity layer. By partnering with IBL, CoT saw an opportunity to get beyond the proof of concept stage to productization. We also could see a compliance wave coming to impact the crypto and blockchain industry, and that a KYC/AML service platform was the right pathway to commercialize an identity layer”.
Blockpass currently offers core identity verification solutions KYC Connect and PASS Verify through a seamless onboarding process using the Admin Console. There’s no need to download complicated software or hire an engineer. With the Dashboard, services can approve customer identities for onboarding in minutes instead of hours.
How Does KYC Connect Work?
Using KYC Connect is easy. Your first step, as a merchant, will be to sign up to gain access to their console. Once you’re all verified, you get access to your own intuitive dashboard where you can control all aspects of the service.
Your customers are then required to create a “pre-verified identity” using the secure Blockpass eKYC system in the Blockpass Mobile App. Once this is done, your customer can register for your service by simply scanning the QR code on your website and you will be able to verify each customer, as well as documentation they share with you. The service automates and streamlines the verification process, making it simpler and safer for both businesses and their customers.
KYC Connect Features
Blockpass’s KYC Connect has lots of great features inclusive of the service, in addition to providing industrial-grade verification that is globally compliant. The application undergoes the following checks on your customers:
- Face matching
- Proof of address
- Continuous Anti-Money Laundering (Ongoing AML)
- Sanctioned countries
- Politically-exposed persons
In addition to the above, the Blockpass App verifies the name, date of birth, and documentation of each customer and carries out ongoing verification monitoring to ensure compliance is upheld.
Hans told us this; “KYC ConnectTM is fully comprehensive – packing in the most rigorous level of compliance including AI-based passport and ID authentication, Face Match – matching faces with IDs, anti-money laundering (AML) check, politically exposed persons (PEP) check, sanctioned countries check, adverse media check, ongoing monitoring in real time of AML, PEP and sanctions, and proof of address check”.
Hans also explained about the capability of using the application with blockchains; “Blockpass is also unique in that our application provides identity verification across blockchains. Currently, it is live on Ethereum and Waves, with more chains to come. Moreover, it is the only identity verification platform providing crypto wallet address verification and whitelisting. Currently, the Blockpass App can register Bitcoin, Ethereum and Waves wallet addresses”.
How Much Does KYC Connect Cost?
The application is free for your customers and costs you (the business) just $4.50 per user check. The handy thing is that it is a pay-as-you-go service, therefore, no bulk buying is required. You only pay for what you use. There are also no set-up costs involved, and no nasty surprise hidden charges.
Hans explained; “For businesses, KYC Connect – our flagship KYC and AML SaaS – is fully hosted in the cloud, fully automated, pay-as-you-go and requires no setup fee. They can instantly set up an account for free, trial a compliance service, and start onboarding users immediately.
For users, Blockpass provides a seamless, secure and private onboarding experience. Once verified, they can sign up for a whole host of financial and other regulated services with a rapid, one click action. They don’t have to go through the pain of doing the KYC process over and over again”.
Blockpass is Working Towards Its Key Goals
The dedicated Blockpass team are aiming to put more focus on the blockchain, wallet, and crypto industries to make verification processes more mainstream.
To this end, Hans told us about their plans; “We seek to bring the blockchain and crypto industry into compliance so that it can truly go mainstream. We are doing this by building a verified network, called PASS Club, that requires all members to be verified via checks of Face Match, AML, PEP, Sanctioned countries, and real-time AML monitoring. The idea is to eliminate trollers, scammers, and fraudsters, and create an e-commerce environment that is safe for both users and merchants”.
This is just one aspect that Blockpass is focusing on for the future. Another is “to build a cloud compliance gateway with excellent UX for businesses to operate and users to on-board quickly and easily”.
It sounds like they have a strong vision of what they hope to achieve, as well as a clear pathway towards their goals!
However, Hans was secretive about some plans for the near future, stating “We have a lot of new features in our roadmap that will help us to grow our business and compete asymmetrically. We are keeping those in stealth at the moment as we are about to start another fundraising round in the new year”.
It’s been great speaking with Hans and we thank him for sharing these details with us. Good luck to Blockpass for the future and we look forward to seeing what these new features are!
