Finovate Blog

Better onboarding and fewer fraud incidents are the goals of U.K.-based, online money transfer platform, BCRemit. And this week, the UK.-based company partnered with identity confirmation specialist HooYu to help them reach both of those critical objectives.

“HooYu is a great complement to the traditional database identity check approach,” BCRemit Managing Director Oliver Calma said. Because most of BCRemit’s customers are migrant workers without a credit “footprint”, Calma explained, verifying and onboarding them can be a cumbersome process. In addition to making verification and onboarding easier, HooYu’s technology will provide valuable anti-fraud protections. “HooYu also catches fraudsters that sometimes slip through identity database checks where they have already committed identity theft and know the name and address of the person they are impersonating,” Calma said.

BCRemit specializes in providing online money transfer services to migrant workers, particularly from the Philippines, who are employed in Europe. A registered payments institution with the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), BCRemit enables recipients to collect cash at any one of more than 7,000 branches of BCRemit’s pay-out partners. Bank transfers can be made to any bank in the Philippines, including Allied Bank, BDO, and PNB.

Pictured: HooYu Marketing Director David Pope and Product Director Grant Greenwood demonstrating the HooYu identity confirmation platform at FinovateEurope 2017.

Director of Marketing for HooYu David Pope pointed to the ease-of-use of HooYu’s platform for the end user as another major selling point for the technology. “This enables our clients to improve conversion, still offer the consumer a smooth customer journey, and comply with AML regulations,” Pope said.

HooYu demonstrated its global identity confirmation service at FinovateEurope 2017. The company’s technology enables real-time identify verification without requiring any exchange or storage of sensitive personal information like social security numbers. Once integrated into the firm’s online application process, the HooYu service analyzes and cross checks data from the person’s digital footprint. At the same time, the technology extracts, analyzes, and validates information from the person’s ID documentation, including a biometric facial recognition check with the person’s photo ID.

In addition to money transfer firms, HooYu serves lenders, banks, and even individuals with its identify confirmation technology. “It’s our philosophy that in today’s digital age sometimes consumers want to check the identity of other consumers,” Pope said, using the example of P2P commerce via online marketplaces. “And it shouldn’t just be the privilege of big banks or clever online businesses to check someone else’s identity.”

Last month, HooYu announced a partnership with Australia’s first crowd investment platform, Vestabyte. In May, HooYu teamed up with Irish information services provider Stubbs Gazette. The company was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in London, U.K. Keith Marsden is CEO.