In 2018, Plaid launched Plaid in Canada to enable account connectivity for thousands of fintechs and help increase financial access for millions of Canadians.
Since then, they’ve worked with companies like Wealthsimple, Shopify, and Wave. But onboarding a new user is more than “just account connectivity.” It requires “navigating complex KYC requirements, verifying a user’s identity, and combating fraud.”
Plaid is now pleased “to announce the launch of Plaid Identity Verification and Monitor, a global verification and KYC solution, in Canada to help digital finance apps and services comply with FINTRAC, confirm users’ identities and reduce fraud during onboarding.”
With one Plaid integration, companies can “verify the identities of users from more than 200 countries.”
A top challenge for many Canadian fintechs is “understanding KYC requirements that apply to their business and navigating Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) verification methods.”
That’s why Plaid “built an all-in-one solution so you can focus on building great products and experiences while they help you take care of compliance.” Plus, they’re “making verifying identities as easy as account linking to help onboard new users quickly, safely, and securely.”
With English and Canadian French support, Plaid IDV is “a single solution that you can customize to comply with multiple FINTRAC verification methods.”
They integrate directly “with a credit reporting agency to help you comply with FINTRAC’s credit file and dual-process verification methods using our lightning-fast reliable data source verification.”
You can also “leverage Plaid IDV’s documentary and liveness (selfie) checks to satisfy FINTRAC’s government-issued photo ID verification method.”
Additionally, to ensure the highest pass rates, Plaid IDV “can dynamically fall back to alternative verification methods if the initial check is unsuccessful – helping to automate FINTRAC compliance and minimizing the need for manual interventions or configurations on your end.”
With increased sophistication in fraud ranging from synthetic fraud and money laundering attempts to account takeovers, their anti-fraud engine has “seen it all.”
The engine is “built into the verification experience and kicks in the moment a user begins the process.”
Starting with passive signals like how a user types their PII and the order in which they input their data all the way up to document and biometric verification, they “identify fraudsters and keep them out during onboarding.”
Additionally, their fraud detection model is “trained on hundreds of risk signals and anti-fraud vectors across our network and analyzes email, phone, and device indicators to catch risky behavior consistent with bad actors, fraud rings, and bots.”
Plaid IDV complements Plaid’s account linking experience “that more than 38 million Canadian consumers have used to connect over 200 financial accounts to digital finance apps in Canada.”
And because consumers today “are inherently global, we support over 16,000 ID documents in 200 countries and territories and authoritative data source checks in over 36 countries.”
Plaid IDV has verified millions of identities around the world.
Plaid IDV and Monitor “requires little to no development work for existing Plaid customers and allows you to integrate ID verification seamlessly into your onboarding stack.”
On the backend, they provide “a no-code management experience, enabling you to launch verification flows, update success criteria, and review cases all in the dashboard.”
Instead of having to combine many providers for different parts of onboarding, they “offer a fully integrated product experience through Plaid.”
Plaid says it is proud to already be partnering “with leading Canadian fintechs like Wiseday to help enable faster and more secure access to digital financial services.”
Since the launch of Plaid IDV in the US and the UK, the firm has “been working with hundreds of new customers to help enable frictionless onboarding experiences across banking, lending, wealth and proptech use cases.”
To help you navigate the ever changing KYC and compliance landscape, the firm’s goal is “to continue expanding our identity verification and anti-fraud product suite.”
