Verify on the Fly

A Little Background, First

The vast majority of initial coin offering (ICO) projects are targeting a worldwide audience, attempting to attract as much capital as possible. But with the big audience comes even bigger responsibility—if the new venture fails to abide by the law, it will just cease to exist. Know-your-customer and anti-money laundering (KYC/AML) policies help regulators from across the world determine the legal status of blockchain businesses. To ensure compliance with KYC/AML laws in the specific jurisdictions, financial service companies are required to identify their clientele. Since financial watchdogs and other regulatory authorities constantly update their requirements, fintech—and, particularly, blockchain—businesses often struggle to stay afloat legally. With solutions such as Sum&Substance, however, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s not an oncoming train.

Back in the days, the identity verification process would take days, if not weeks. A user had to upload their ID documents and wait for a company’s compliance officer to manually review and approve their request. Due to the astronomic increase the cryptocurrency (and ICO) space experienced in 2017, new companies facilitating the whole procedure have started to arise. Not only is Sum&Substance more technologically advanced than its predecessors, but it is also built atop Telegram—the most used and respected messenger within the crypto community.

What’s Changed?

Blockchain and fintech services can seamlessly integrate the Telegram Passport button that has previously been integrated with Sum&Substance. In this case, users will upload and send the documents via the Telegram interface, and KYC checks will be processed through the Sum&Substance’s system.

To pass verification, a user will need to upload their data—photos, ID documents, and place of residence—to Telegram Passport only once. After obtaining a user’s consent, the KYC provider will access this data, verify it, and execute the know-your-customer procedure; the process will take approximately 1–3 minutes. In case a user made an error or uploaded the images of poor quality, they will receive a message right in the Telegram interface describing the error and giving the guidelines on how to fix it. After passing KYC once, a user will not have to upload the documents for another on-line service again—the system will only ask for permission to process their personal data, and the documents will be sent automatically.

Despite that Telegram Passport stores documents in a cloud, the messenger’s employees have no access to the data. All information is stored in an encrypted form, and the access key is only available to the user. The KYC provider gets access to the data only after receiving the user’s consent. Sum&Substance complies with one of the most stringent regulations, The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679.

“Sum&Substance’s solution is probably the most elegant on the market; with this module installed, the Minter blockchain network has managed to launch KYC/AML procedures for the private sale on the same day. User verification is so quick that it takes only one minute, check it out yourself: https://www.minter.network/ps. No system is more reliable and convenient than Sum&Substance,” assures Evgeny Gordeev, founder of DeCenter and Minter.

“Telegram Passport is a kind of secure multi-passport for Internet users, which simplifies certain mandatory procedures. We see a huge demand for such a simple tool for verification. Minter is one of the first KYC cases on the Telegram Passport platform, but right now we are discussing similar projects with companies from other industries, such as car sharing, P2P marketplaces, and fintech. Because of the convenience and the speed, everyone expects the Telegram Passport to show dynamics similar to that of the Chinese WeChat,” says Andrey Severyukhin, CEO at Sum&Substance.

Summing Up

There is a host of rivals—for example, Civic—offering the user identity verification services. What makes Sum&Substance stand out is storing the data in the cloud safeguarded by Telegram rather than locally in the app. Hence, alongside providing the highest levels of physical and network security, the company is also building an easy-to-navigate, user-friendly infrastructure within the ecosystem that many market players know so well. With the influx of fraudsters willing to swindle you out of your cryptocurrency savings, data security is definitely something one needs to pay close attention to.